Pro filia, vivo ego
by LillyMayFlower
Summary: Sam and Dylan have always sailed fairly choppy seas with their relationship - but they can't afford to be turbulent any longer, not with a baby on the way. A collection of oneshots, sequel to In Search of Trust though you could probably read this without reading that first!
1. Count on Me

**As soon as I finished **_**In Search of Trust, **_**and while I was tying up the end of that fic, I knew exactly what would happen to 'my' Dylan and Sam following her realisation that she was at long last pregnant again. This fic is not a normal, linear story (mostly because I didn't quite want to commit to that style of storytelling this time!) but a collection of oneshots, all based on songs (I have a slight obsession with attaching music to my writing) and all set at different points in the time following the epilogue of **_**In Search of Trust**_**. I hope you enjoy them.**

'**Pro filia, vevo ego' is Latin. ****I won't give the translation yet (if you want to look it up, that's your call!) because I don't want to give too much away!**

**A/N - I've re-uploaded both chapters minus the song lyrics, because I've realised that's a big no-no! Definitely don't need a suspension of my account or worse.**

* * *

_Count on Me _by Bruno Mars

10 weeks pregnant

"I'm sorry," Sam whispered, sitting against the bathroom wall and watching Dylan as he wrung out a flannel that he'd just run under the cold tap. He passed it over to her, and she gratefully pressed it first to her forehead then the back of her neck. It was shortly after two in the morning; they were both on early shifts that began in a matter of hours.

"Don't be sorry," he insisted.

"I didn't mean to wake you, though. You're in work early, the same as I am."

"I think you'd be within your rights to call in sick, Samantha." Oops. He hadn't intended to sound quite so patronising. "This is the fourth night in a row that you've not slept —"

"— and neither have you, and I don't hear you volunteering to call in sick," she said bitterly. "I'm pregnant, not ill." She closed her eyes and rested her head back. She heard Dylan stand up from where he perched on the edge of the bath, and felt him sit next to her. His hand closed around hers. She spoke quietly, almost weakly. "I didn't mean to snap at you. I just… I can't. This is important to me." Looking down at her flat stomach, she rested a hand on it gently.

Dylan sighed sympathetically. "This is important to me too."

He'd understood her sleepy mumble of _I can't, _perfectly. Until she reached that safer mark of 12 weeks, they would keep their news to themselves. However, this meant that Sam was struggling on with very little sleep and feeling unwell through most shifts, with no support except for stolen moments with him. She was apologetic every time that he stopped what he was doing, whether that was working, sleeping, reading, watching television or anything at all, to be with her when she was sick or feeling poorly — not realising that he would do it all again in a heartbeat. They'd spent too long as a couple, _not _doing things the right way. And they'd had one chance at this before, that had been cruelly cut short before it had really begun. Now, he was determined to be there, no matter what, for Sam and for their baby.

They sat together on the bathroom floor as Sam's waves of nausea crashed around them. Dylan felt entirely helpless: the best he could do was hold her hair back from her face when she threw up.

"I wish I could be more useful," he murmured.

She squeezed his hand, gritting her teeth and closing her eyes in an attempt to ride out the urge to vomit again. "This is enough," she reassured. She leaned on his shoulder and let out a slow breath. "Thank you."

He turned and kissed the top of her head gently. "I love you."

"Even when I smell like vomit?"

He smiled. "I don't recall it making any difference at King's."

Sam let out half a laugh. "Wow, don't you just know how to woo a woman!" She remembered the day he referred to in sharp clarity.

Dylan shrugged and held her to him. While a soft, caring gesture, it was also partially a diagnostic tool – she was no longer as tense as she'd been when trying to keep down the contents of her stomach. Unless something changed in the next few seconds, she might be alright again.

"Do you want to try going back to bed?" he asked after a while.

She nodded tentatively. "I think so. It's easing."

"I'll go and sort you a glass of water, okay?" He stood up, and held out a hand to help her do the same.

"Dylan, no, you need the sleep."

He shook his head. "It'll take a few minutes, and I need to know you're looked after, more than I need the sleep."

Sam would dispute this until the end of days, but she was powerless to argue so she nodded in agreement and returned to bed. Lack of sleep had been a warning she missed, the last time things went… amiss, with his OCD. But that was behind them. _This _was their future, though hopefully it would not be punctuated with dizzy spells, nausea and vomiting for too much longer.

* * *

"Hello? Ambulance service, can you call out to us so we know where you are?"

It was lucky that this call had come from an assisted living facility: it was much easier to be let into a flat by a warden, than have to beg unhelpful neighbours for a key or attempt to force entry to a house to reach a patient. A muffled shout from the next room directed them to where they were needed.

A frail, elderly woman lay on the floor by a floral armchair, embarrassment written all over her face. "I'm awfully sorry that you have to spend your morning having your time taken up by me, just an old biddy fallen from her chair," she said sheepishly, colour flooding the cheeks hollowed by old age.

"Don't be daft," Sam said kindly, "You're not taking up our time, we're just doing our job. And this morning, our job happens to be making sure you've not done any damage by slipping off that chair."

The old lady smiled. "I expect you want to know if I hit my head, what my name is and whether I know what day it is?"

Iain laughed. "You after our jobs?"

She regarded him with vague amusement. "I didn't hit my head, my name is Patsy and it's Tuesday."

"Very good," Sam remarked, nodding encouragingly and turning to the warden for a moment for medical information he might be able to share.

"And nothing of the sort, young man," Patsy went on to Iain. "I know the questions well enough to say them backwards in my sleep, that's all." When Iain raised his eyebrows curiously, she carried on, suddenly quietly proud of her story. "I was in the Nursing Corps in the War, deployed to northern France."

Iain's mouth fell open a little, before he remembered that he was there to do a job, first and foremost. "We served too, me and my colleague – in Afghanistan. Medical Corps."

Patsy nodded, relaxing visibly. "I can trust you to look after me, then?"

Sam knelt on the floor, back at Patsy's level, having overheard most of the preceding conversation. "Of course you can, nothing less than the best for you." She assessed Patsy's awkward position on the floor. "Where does it hurt?"

Though it would have been exceptional to ask Patsy purely about what she'd seen of medicine in the War, if she was prepared to talk about that, there was the small matter of the job at hand. Sam and Iain assessed her diligently, glad to have quickly gained her trust through their shared military connection.

Once she was stable and in a more comfortable position, Sam glanced around the room. A graduation photograph stood proudly on the mantelpiece, the newest of the large collection of frames around the room.

"Is there anyone who can meet you at the hospital, Patsy?" she asked hopefully.

"Oh, do I really need to end up there?" Patsy replied, not answering the question.

"'Fraid so, sunshine," Iain said. "We've got to get this hip looked at, just in case. We can't go letting anything slide, not with a lady of the War."

Patsy grew a little in her bird-like frame. "I was there on D-Day, you know?" She said it so nonchalantly, before finally answering Sam's question. "My grandson's in Bristol. He works at the university, in the history department. That's his photo up there, when he earned his doctorate."

Sam, who was reeling from Patsy's further revelation about her past, said, as soothingly as she could, "We'll get in touch with him, make sure he gets over here to see you, alright? Least we can do." She rubbed Patsy's arm comfortingly.

* * *

Sam breathed shallowly, trying to angle herself away from the smell coming from the kebab box on the ambulance dashboard. They were driving back to base for lunch, a novelty in itself, but if they didn't get there soon then Sam knew she would alert all of Iain's suspicions and her secret-keeping would be over. He already thought it strange that she'd rejected the offer of a kebab for herself, but if she threw his out of the window of a moving ambulance her life would not be worth living, not to mention such an act would be followed by questions she did not yet wish to answer.

Her stomach rolled again, and she fixed her eyes out of the windscreen, holding every muscle in her body tense and still.

Iain sensed that something was off with Sam. He assumed it was the tail-end of whatever had caused her to keel over last week, so all he wanted to do was distract her and get her back to base in time to get her blood sugar up a bit, before he was treated to a repeat performance. "Did she have a lot to say, about the war, then?"

Sam hummed thoughtfully. "Yeah, she did. I suppose at a hundred and one, she's far enough away to talk about it a bit more easily. I could listen to her for days, it's one of those things people shouldn't forget, y'know?"

"You sound like Dylan," Iain said, chuckling. "I'm surprised you weren't taking notes for him, back there."

Sam rolled her eyes. "Shut up," she said, managing a weak smile as she gazed out of the open window. It was true though, that she'd have one very jealous Dylan at home that evening, or perhaps one furious that she'd given that particular patient to Connie and not him.

* * *

"Sam, can I have a word?" said Jan, who had had quite enough of the lacking explanation of Sam's staunch disgust at what would usually have been her first choice of a quick lunch between call-outs.

Sam ran a hand through her hair and dragged it quickly back into a bun as she stood up and followed Jan to the office.

"_Someone's in trouble_," Iain joked in a singsong voice.

It took some serious self-control not to make a rude gesture in his direction.

* * *

"Is there something wrong?" Sam asked innocently. As far as she could think of, there was no reason for her to be called into the office. It had been a good while since she'd done something worthy of a talking-to, and in the last week especially she'd made every effort to do things exactly by the book in terms of keeping herself safe.

"You tell me!" Jan replied, her unbreaking gaze becoming piercing very quickly. "You're not eating, which is a first." She raised her eyebrows. "You've been dizzy more than just last week. You might think you've been hiding it, and you might have got it past Iain but you've certainly not got it past me."

"I – I am eating, just not… I'm fine," she insisted, realising that this would only raise Jan's suspicions more.

"Well, you're obviously not. You're not yourself at all, Sam – I've never seen you be so careful."

Sam spotted an opportunity. "Isn't that what you want, though? A good paramedic who can do the job and follow instructions _without _running head first into –"

"– Not if that means my team being different," Jan said pointedly. "You're not yourself at all; if I didn't know any better, I'd think you were..."

Sam looked down at her lap guiltily.

Jan's expression softened considerably. "Sam, is there anything you need to tell me?" She watched Sam's face: the young woman looked conflicted alongside hopelessly caught out. "Look, you're not in any trouble. Obviously. I was just worried about you, that's all. I'm too used to you rushing around, getting yourself into hot water at every opportunity. But if there's something I can do, as your boss, to keep you safe, then I can't do that without the necessary information."

"All right," Sam said quietly. "I'm pregnant."

Jan smiled, though Sam was still looking at her hands and didn't see. She'd thought as much, from the first delicately refused invitation to the pub.

"We didn't want to tell anyone… Dylan and me, I mean. Not until I'm twelve weeks at least." She looked up at Jan, her face falling. "I miscarried once. Ten years ago, when I was home from a deployment. No-one knew at all, apart from us. So it's not like I perfected the art of breaking the news."

"There's no great art to it, love," Jan said, her voice rich in sympathy. "I'm sorry that that happened to you. But you got through it, you've got another chance now – and you can count on me keeping quiet."  
"Really?"

"It's hardly my news to share." She reached for her cup of coffee. "Congratulations, anyway. Keep me in the loop if anything changes, won't you? And _tell me _if you're not feeling well. There are ways around things."

Sam nodded eagerly, suddenly feeling that a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.


	2. I Was Me

**Thank you so much for the lovely reviews on my first instalment. I'm glad that I'm not the only one still invested in this AU!**

**Here's my next one - and I will definitely be filling in the space in between at some point, I won't just leave the open can of worms created by this chapter! **

**A/N - If you're wondering why I've re-uploaded, it's because I've removed the song lyrics, sorry for any confusion!**

* * *

_I Was Me _by Imagine Dragons

25 weeks pregnant

"Good morning," Dylan said sleepily, smiling at Sam, who had not yet opened her eyes despite the alarm clock ringing loudly and the bedside light, still switched on from the night before, which Dylan had pointed directly at her face. She'd always slept better than him, but since becoming pregnant she was using that as every excuse to seize an extra five minutes.

"Is it?" Sam mumbled. She pushed a few strands of hair out of her face, that had escaped the bun the rest was tied in, while the other hand reached affectionately for her bump. "From here, it still feels like the middle of the night."

"Sadly not. Same time as we've always got up for a seven o'clock start." He sat up and watched as Sam curled up as best she could, hiding under the duvet like a child.

"_If you'd had a two o'clock wake-up call from what felt like the cast of Riverdance __on your insides__, you'd have a little more sympathy,_" Sam muttered under her breath.

She knew she wasn't being fair, which was why she wouldn't say that to Dylan's face. He was incredibly patient with her, far more than he'd ever been with anybody else, possibly ever. He cared so much, and he was trying so hard to keep things right – he'd worked hard to recover this time and she only hoped, for his sake, that it would last.

"Alright," she said, projecting her voice from under the duvet. "Alright, I'm getting up."

* * *

The arrival of autumn had brought with it dark mornings and evenings that drew in too soon. An emotionally wearing day was made infinitely worse by there being zero chance of daylight at the end of a shift.

A twelve-hour shift never used to feel like this. It had been tiring, of course, but it never used to leave him feeling emotionally exhausted on top of physically drained. When seven o'clock rolled around at long last, Dylan felt empty. He didn't feel like the same man who'd smiled this morning. He felt thousands of miles from holding Sam in his arms and thinking ahead to the future they would share with their little girl in the spring. Time had warped awfully while he'd been on leave, but now he was back at home and had returned to work, it seemed to be going at hyperspeed.

All of a sudden, fifteen weeks away didn't seem so far anymore. His heart sped up and seemed to beat in his throat as the familiar sensation of worry crept back in. Or rather, its volume increased; it was always there, a low hum or a ferocious roar of thoughts.

"Dylan, is everything okay?"

His head snapped around at Zoe's touch on his arm. She had spoken softly, just loud enough to catch his attention without startling him. Had he really looked that bad? "I –" He faltered, catching the end of his tongue between his teeth to halt his stammering attempt to answer her very simple question.

"It's alright," she reassured, pulling him out of the way of a stretcher being pushed in from an ambulance outside. It was a relief that it was not Sam's ambulance. When she tried to read Dylan's state of mind from his eyes, she saw raw fear.

"It's not alright!" he returned, finding his voice and hurling it out. "I'm supposed to be better now, and all at once, I'm not."

Zoe reached out for his arm again. He had stared at the floor after speaking, but at that movement he met her eyes again, grounded by her gesture of comfort. "Dylan, I know you don't see it, but you _are _better now. The fact that you've even said anything to me about not feeling right, that's progress. You're allowed to have off-days, and maybe today's one of them. That's fine."

"It's not fine," he said gruffly. He frowned sadly. "Sam deserves so much more than this."

When he was gone, Zoe took out her phone, hoping that Sam's shift was nearly over.

_Fair warning, I don't think Dylan's okay. Nothing has happened, I don't think. 'Just' a bad night, I think._

The reply was nearly instant.

_Thank you x_

* * *

"Dylan? Can you come out?" The silence from the other side of the bathroom door was worrying. Sam sighed, and carefully sat down on the landing. She leaned against the wall beside the door and rested her hands on the swell of her stomach.

* * *

He clamped his hands on the sides of the sink and looked into the eyes of his reflection, but he barely recognised the empty, frightened face looking back at him. He took a long, slow breath through his nose before gradually letting it out.

"_I'm alright now_," he whispered. "_It has to be alright_."

If he repeated it enough times, it would come true, wouldn't it?

There were black spots in his memory, blank periods from which he could remember nothing at all, during the relapse. They scared him relentlessly, and the idea of more appearing was almost as bad as his fear of slipping back into that relapsed state. The very thought of that was enough to accelerate his pulse and force him to control his breathing so it didn't slide into hyperventilation.

Taking a forced breath through his nose, he tapped the edge of the sink urgently. His fingers moved quickly: the tension building in his wrist was a comfortable, tangible reminder that he was alive and lucid. He wrung his hands, hard, then splashed his face with cold water. The shock of this seemed to propel him back to reality. It was a surprise to feel a lump in his throat and the beginnings of tears in his eyes.

* * *

Sam turned, and shifted her position until she was kneeling directly in front of the door. She wanted to knock, she wanted to knock until the door fell off its hinges and finally he'd notice that she wasn't playing around, she wasn't lying to him, this mattered to her and she'd do whatever it took to make things better. But she placed a palm on the door instead, and tapped her fingers gently on the wood, just hard enough to make a sound on the other side.

"Please, please, don't do this again, don't shut me out," she said. "I know it all feels impossible right now, I –" She gasped in surprise as the baby shifted unexpectedly.

"Sam!" The lock slid back on the door at once, and he was there, kneeling in front of her with red-rimmed eyes still filled with anxiety but unequivocally, they were still Dylan's eyes.

Sam let out a little sigh and smiled a tiny smile of relief. "It's okay, I'm fine, she just moved and I wasn't expecting it. Are you okay?" She lowered her chin and looked at him meaningfully.

"I don't know," he mumbled. He scrunched each hand closed into a nervous fist. "I don't feel like I know anything, anymore."

She shook her head. "I hope you know one thing." She worked his hands free and held them. "I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere."

Dylan's shoulders rounded; he seemed to shrink into himself. "Even if I go crazy again?"

"_Especially _if that happens again. I'm not leaving you again, Dylan. You're not going through this alone. You can go crazy all you want, I'll still be here. Please, just talk to me." She kissed the stubble on his cheek, damp with tears. "You need a shave," she whispered as she carefully wiped a tear from the other cheek with her thumb.

It was enough to momentarily pull him out of his head. His syllable of laughter was intercepted by a sob, and in a matter of seconds he was shaking in his effort to hold it together. It wasn't until Sam came forwards and wrapped her arms tightly around him that he cried. Each breath was punctuated with a heaving sob as he finally relinquished what little control he had left. Sam's heart broke too, but she remained stoic, waiting for his cries to become softer until they petered out entirely.

"What happened, today?" She wondered whether she was perhaps crossing a line by even asking that, but he didn't seem offended.

The strongest emotion that Dylan felt at that moment was shame. "Nothing at all out of the ordinary," he said, defeat heavy in his tone. "It just seemed like a very long day, and then… the OCD crept back up on me until it was the loudest thing I could hear. It's not fair. I'm supposed to be well again."

Sam thought for a moment, weighing up what needed to be said, against Dylan's sensitivity to any kind of 'special treatment' because of his mental health. She grimaced in discomfort and shifted slightly where she sat, which provided little relief. Rubbing the bottom of her back also had next to no effect.

"I don't like you worrying about me so much," he said. "I should be looking after you, not the other way around."

She rolled her eyes playfully. "I really am fine; you know I've been getting pain in my hips, and sitting like this isn't exactly helping." It was time to bite the bullet. "Look, maybe you need to talk to Occupational Health about reducing your hours. I know you didn't want the whole phased return, but it might be what you need. It's… it's setting you off, to spend daylight hours not seeing any of it, and to be so worn out by a full shift is making you feel like you can't stay in control."

Dylan shrank back for a moment, before trying to brush it off with a weak imitation of his usual sarcastic self. "Am I being told to slow down, by a pregnant woman?"

"You are," Sam replied firmly, a spark in her eye. "And she's _your _hormonal, uncomfortable pregnant woman, so be careful where you put your snark!"

He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. He lingered there, holding the contact for as long as possible. "I love you more than words can say," he said in a low voice. "You put up with so much and I will never know how to express just how incredible you are."

Sam squeezed his hands. He wouldn't recognise it, but at the height of his relapse he was hardly aware of whether he was alone in a room or not, and certainly could never have strung a sentence together like that.

* * *

Late that evening, having stood under the shower's jet of hot water for long enough to feel that he'd washed away not only a few layers of worry but also a few days' worth of ED tension, Dylan hesitated in the doorway of the living room. Part of him felt as though he was on the outside looking in, not quite allowed to return home fully enough to feel that he lived here, despite his name being on the mortgage and his books taking up a disproportionate amount of space in almost every room. His inpatient treatment had been slightly shorter than average, long enough to put his brain back to something resembling normal. But while he could now mostly cope with real life again, he didn't know where he belonged, or even quite where he fitted with Sam and their unborn baby.

Sam, who had been somewhere between daydreaming and slipping into a light sleep, looked up and noticed his malaise.

"Feeling better?" she asked brightly.

"A little," he admitted. "I resisted the urge to drown myself in the shower," he added drily.

Sam rolled her eyes. From the glint in his eyes, she knew he was joking. This was yet another sign that this was a very temporary lapse. "Come and sit down, and give me your hands." She was excited to share this moment with him.

Dylan did as he was told, and soon had his hands nervously on Sam's stomach. He flinched in surprise when he felt the strange sensation of his baby moving under his palms.

"You don't have to look so scared of her," Sam said. "She's only a pound and a half, she's not going to do you any damage!"

"Someone's been doing their research." He frowned sadly. "I'm not scared of her, it's just… Doesn't matter."

"It _does _matter," Sam pressed. "If there's something on your mind, tell me."

He pulled his hands away, knotting them into a familiar wrung shape in his lap. "I should have kept it together, and been here," he said. The guilt was overpowering – every emotion tonight was magnified hundreds of times, everything was so much closer and louder than it might have been on a normal day. "I have questions that I should know the answers to. I shouldn't be asking anything about our baby, I should just know, because I should have been here!"

"No, Dylan. You needed help, and you got it. I've never seen things get so bad, but they're getting better now. The only reason you weren't here is that you got the help that you needed. And the only person begrudging you that, is you." She delicately separated his hands and held them. "I don't care how many questions you have," she said firmly. "Ask them."

Dylan hesitated. He didn't know how to be a father; his own had not given him anything that he would ever dream of passing on to his own children. But he knew one thing: his father sure as hell had not shown any interest in him as a child, and it wasn't difficult to extrapolate that his drunken state wasn't conducive to knowing anything about him in utero, either. Everything that Dylan did for this baby, was a step further away from repeating the past.

"I've never felt her move like that before," he said slowly. "Does she – does she do it a lot?"

Sam smiled. "She's only started like this in the last few weeks. It's always around this time of day, and when I first get into bed, too." She squeezed one of his hands. "I don't want you to feel guilty about missing things. You are the only one holding it against you, and if I could find a way to step inside your head and take that away, I'd do it in a heartbeat."

"I wouldn't want you to have to see the mess up there," Dylan replied quietly. Despite his thoughts being muddled and loud, he knew it was true that he didn't want Sam to ever experience the turmoil that dogged him like a shadow. "Tell me something else about her? I like listening to you talk about her."

Sam's cheeks coloured slightly. It had once been so rare to hear anything resembling affection from him. "Well, when you were still admitted there was a day I learned that she doesn't like iced water."

Dylan couldn't help himself letting out a small laugh. "What?"

Sam nodded. "I'm serious! It was a warm afternoon and I really wanted something cold, we – that's me and Iain – got some ice cubes and I sat in the back of the ambulance trying to shove them through the neck of my water bottle. All that effort, and then when I drank it, she started swimming around like a little fish, moving about like mad."

"You know you sound different, when you talk about her?" Dylan observed. "It's beautiful."

Sam looked down fondly, and brought one of Dylan's hands back to her stomach. "When she's stubborn like that, I get more and more certain she's going to be like you."

"God help us, if we end up with a tiny version of me, who won't even be able to communicate her grievances!"

She leaned her head on his shoulder. "Not communicating? It'll just be like having two of you, then..."


	3. Ready Now

**A third chapter at last – and an important one...**

**I'm gutted that I can't keep including the little quotations from the songs I've picked as the chapter titles for this fic – they're what I've got written in my notebook as inspiration for the whole mini-story that is each one! **

**Enjoy the new instalment; I've added my take on Sam and Tom… Hopefully I don't lose any of my tiny number of readers as a result!**

* * *

_Ready Now _by dodie

11 weeks pregnant

"Sam, will you marry me… again?"

His voice was so earnest but unsure.

Sam's insides turned to jelly, and not in a good way. She looked down at the ornate ring he had quietly presented to her, taking in every bit of its beauty. It was surely impossible to want something so much, to love someone so dearly while every fibre of her being wanted to run for the hills at the idea of being married for a third time. Her heart thudded in her chest: she wanted nothing more than to slide that ring onto her finger, safe in the knowledge that this time, it really was forever. The sick feeling in her stomach had nothing to do with the tiny life clinging to her insides.

"I –" She froze. Her eyes filled with tears. His uncertainly hopeful expression tugged at all of her emotions.

Dylan said nothing, but reached and took gentle hold of her wrist. "Samantha," he began quietly, but she was already standing, distraught, and before he knew it she'd slipped from his grasp and was halfway to the living room door.

She shot him an agonised look. "I want to. I want to say yes, Dylan. I need this – I need… you." She bit her lip, hard. "I want to, but I can't." She looked at the floor. "I'm sorry."

* * *

He found her upstairs on the bed, curled around her pillow and resting her head on his. Her eyes were closed but the surrounding skin glistened.

"Sam," he said, his voice only marginally above a whisper. "I'm here, but if you don't want me to be –"

"No, stay," she cut in, opening her eyes but not moving.

He frowned sadly, wishing he knew how to push for information without it becoming an interrogation, when all he wanted was to take away whatever hurt she was feeling. "You really don't have to marry me," he said softly. "I didn't think it would ever cause you so much distress."

Sam simply shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut again as a fresh wave of tears broke. She did, however, reach out a hand to him, which he took firmly.

"If it would fix things, I would turn back time and never ask. The very last thing I wanted was to hurt you like this."

She opened her eyes but remained horizontal. The proposal had not hurt her; seeing his expression as he knelt at the bedside was like a knife in her heart. "You haven't done anything wrong," she said, tears still running freely though she somehow clawed control of her voice. "That ring is – I don't think I've ever seen anything so beautiful" She cursed the hormones running riot in her body for making her ready to sob afresh at the thought of it. It wasn't the object, it was the meaning carried by the delicate gold band with a precisely cut sapphire in its centre and tiny diamonds on either side. "I panicked," she admitted. "Not about you," she added quickly, "about..." It was too embarrassing. The shame she felt was still raw.

"You don't have to tell me." He was quick to reassure her of this. Of course he wanted to know, but it was hers to share and hers alone. She was under no obligation whatsoever.

"I do," Sam insisted, sitting up at last although she kept her pillow on her lap. "I don't want to ruin our baby's chance of having a proper home, with two married parents, just because there are secrets between us." She covered her face with her hands – if it hadn't been for Tom, if she hadn't been so _stupid _then none of this would even be an issue. There wouldn't be a secret, and she could have accepted that ring without a second thought. If it hadn't been for Tom, then she wouldn't be so terrified of a third attempt at married life.

Dylan stayed quiet, deciding that this was better than any botched attempt at talking over what obviously caused her significant discomfort. He knew that Sam was fully aware of a 'proper home' not purely constituting two married parents, but if she'd set her mind on something, then she would not let it go. He sat up on the bed beside her, waiting patiently to see if she would trust him with what was on her mind.

"How often have we seen couples that seem so perfect on the outside, but they're crumbling underneath?" she asked cryptically, staring straight ahead.

Dylan tipped his head slightly to one side. "Weren't we one of those, once?" he mused, reaching out and putting a steady hand on her knee.

"No," Sam contested. She shook her head but didn't break her stare. "I don't mean that. I mean… They… Everyone thinks that they're happy, but behind closed doors it's another story."

He frowned, unsure what she was getting at. He hoped to god that the seed of an idea he had, was the wrong one entirely.

"I can't marry you, because... I'm damaged goods, Dylan."

"What?!" he returned incredulously. "Samantha, look at me –"

But she still looked blankly ahead. "Things with Tom were… I was so stupid, I should have known..." She drew her knees up to her chest, shutting out the world.

"Known what?" Dylan said, surprising himself in that although there were countless possibilities running through his head, he was suddenly calm. She needed him to be. "Sam, what did he do?"

She finally broke her gaze and turned back to him, though she could not look him in the eyes. "How many times have we told people, they never mean it when they say it won't happen again?"

"Oh, Sam." The realisation of what that… that _animal _had done, fell on him like a ton of bricks.

Sam shuffled up to Dylan and clung to him. It had been years, but the memory of bruises to her skin and her soul was suddenly sharp and stinging once more. There were scars on her mind that remained fresh though she fought hard to ignore, especially now that she had far more pleasant thoughts to dwell on. But still, it had all come back to the fore, and it hurt. She trembled, grateful that Dylan held her so firmly.

He gazed over her shoulder, holding her tight. He didn't have the faintest idea of what he could do, there was no chance of making all of this go away.

* * *

They stayed on the bed until they heard Dervla's whine to be let out. Reluctantly, Dylan released his embrace. "I'll be two minutes," he murmured. He placed a gentle kiss on the top of her head. The lost expression on her face permeated his mind like smoke: whatever she told him after this would break his heart.

* * *

When he came back, she was curled up again, on her side of the bed. The sun cast bright stripes through the Venetian blind at the window, which beamed across the opposite wall and down onto Sam's anxious form. She seemed to relax when he lay beside her, however, which set free some of his own bubbling demons. He faced her and reached out for her hand. She tentatively took it. Despite the July evening, her fingertips were cold. Dylan felt a faint ripple of anger, deep inside him. There were years between Tom and now, yet still he had the power to produce a shock reaction in Sam.

"Would you hate me, if I asked you about it?"

"I couldn't hate you," she replied simply. She took a deep breath, and unintentionally shuddered at the end of it.

Without a word, Dylan got up and pulled Sam's dressing gown from the back of the door. It had been there since the end of spring: it was fleecy and too warm for summer, but it was needed in that moment. He put it gently over her and she smiled weakly.

"It..." she began, "it wasn't always terrible, you know? I didn't spend every moment cowering from him – there wasn't – he didn't –"

"Sam? Stop telling the story you think I want to hear."

She sighed, and seemed to shrink as the weight of past trauma lifted away from her. It _hadn't _always been terrible, but that was what made it so – the not knowing, the uncertainty, the worry that at any moment things would turn three hundred and sixty degrees and would end with a graze, a bumped head or a bruise that would make every breath agony. Once the words began to pour from her, they wouldn't stop, until she reached he moment of freedom and snapped back to her reality to realise that Dylan's face was white. The pair of them were still horizontal on the bed, but it took less than a second for her to be enveloped in a hug she hadn't realised she'd needed.

"It will _never _happen to you again, Samantha, do you understand? You are _safe, _you are _loved, _and things are better now."

His low tone was obviously an effort to put on a brave face, and she had never been more grateful for it. Her face might have been buried in his chest, but she still murmured, "I love you," and hoped that the message would get through.

* * *

Sam spent a sleepless night tossing and turning. Her unease at leaving the proposal in the air between them left her nauseous. Indecision had never been something to sit well with her. But she was sure too that some of the nausea was also due to the multiplying bundle of extra cells she now carried with her.

* * *

When Dylan woke up, the first thing he saw was Sam, sitting up in bed with a book propped open in her lap. She wasn't reading though; she gazed between the window and the curled up wolfhound lying beneath it.

"Morning," he said clumsily, breaking her stare and simultaneously disturbing Dervla, who immediately got up and padded round to his side of the bed for some attention. He rubbed her head and ears affectionately, and wondered how long it would be before she was begging to be taken out for a walk. Weekends did not factor into her equation. He dragged himself to a seated position and looked at Sam, who still had not spoken. Her bottom lip was pinched under her front teeth and there was a tiny crease between her eyebrows. "What are you thinking about?" he asked.

She was silent for a few moments, before she finally blurted out a single word. "Yes."

It was Dylan's turn to frown, though his was in confusion. "What?"

"Yes – I mean –" She seemed to trip over the words, but her face had lightened considerably. "Yes, I will marry you again."


	4. Quiet and Asleep

**A long addition to the story today (half-term is a kind time to the fic writer!) I couldn't single out one song this time, hence why there are two rolled into the title. Both 'Quiet' and 'Asleep' sum up different feelings I wanted to hit in this chapter, and both of them are heartbreakingly beautiful in their own way.**

* * *

Quiet and Asleep – Matilda the Musical / The Smiths  
17 weeks pregnant

He rested his elbows on his knees, and his chin on his fists, but even the weight of leaning down wasn't enough to stop the constant bouncing jittering in his legs. His eyes tracked his fiancée as she paced angrily up and down the room: she'd been on hold for what seemed like an age, which had dramatically reduced her patience for the person now taking her call. She was usually fantastic when she was angry, but he couldn't notice it now because the cause for it, the driving force behind the whole situation, was enough to send the obsessions and compulsions crashing into each other at great speed in his head. Dylan squeezed his eyes shut and linked his hands at the back of his neck, tilting his head down. It felt like the OCD was making more OCD, and the utter nonsense of this was enough to convince him that he was going mad.

"So that's it?!"

Sam's sudden loudness made Dylan jump. His eyes widened in fright as though he was a startled child.

She noticed his violent flinch and looked at him apologetically. The shout hadn't been for him, but just for a moment, he'd taken it as such.

Her expression of sadness upset Dylan even more.

"You're telling me that's it?" Sam repeated. "My husb – my partner is in crisis, but he can only have help during office hours. Perfect. Thank you _so much _for your assistance," she finished hotly. She ended the call.

Dylan's face fell and his shoulders sagged. She shouldn't have to deal with him, she deserved so much better than this – not to mention the fact she had come home from her shift already about to keel over after a day of gritting her teeth to get through the incessant nausea of early pregnancy. But she'd come home not to a peaceful evening, rather to his mental health spiralling out of control. And now it seemed that he was too pathetic even to warrant help. She was stuck with him though he didn't want her to be stuck with him. She shouldn't have to be stuck with this situation. It wasn't fair, didn't the person taking her call realise that she'd been through enough without this too?

"I'm sorry," he said, standing up hurriedly.

She shook her head, tired but resolute. "No, Dylan, don't –"

"I'm sorry," he said again, "I'm sorry, you shouldn't have to – I'm sorry." He knew, rationally, that he wasn't making sense. He hadn't told her what he was apologising for. But he couldn't. When he could think clearly enough to stop apologising, he couldn't quite remember what it was in his clouded mind that made him want to keep saying sorry to her in the first place. And there was no differentiation between an apology coming from his terrifyingly messy mind, and one coming from a place of rationality, apologising for history repeating itself.

Sam sat down next to him on the sofa and reached out her hand to take his. But he stood up, escaping from her soft grasp to leave the room. "Please don't do this," she called redundantly after him. If nothing else, she was desperate to stop him shutting himself off. But it seemed he was already there.

* * *

Upstairs, Dylan wrote furiously in the third new notebook. It had started weeks ago, a valiant attempt to clear his mind which had been overtaken by the OCD until it was the only visible sign of the mental compulsions which interrupted his days and tormented him at night. The lists were infinite: he couldn't contain in his head anymore, everything that he needed to do to make sure that Sam did not miscarry again.

* * *

Downstairs, Sam lay on the sofa with her arms wrapped protectively around her small bump. It had been a shock and an adjustment, to have a permanent visible marker that things had changed. It had certainly prompted her, at long last, to announce her pregnancy at work – something which had earned her a quiet aside from Jan, of _'__You took your time!'_ But while it was a clue to everyone else, an explanation for why things were different, for Sam it was a reminder that things could not be purely about herself and Dylan, anymore.

Lying in bed that night, she didn't know what to do. She was so tired, but everything conspired against her to keep her awake. It was so hard to keep up a pretence of rest so that he wouldn't worry about her, when all she could feel in the room was his nervous energy.

* * *

Better judgement would always be overruled by mental illness.

The next morning, Dylan got ready for work as usual. He kissed Sam goodbye as gently as possible, eager not to disturb her sleep after she'd had such a restless night. She stirred minutely, but her eyes remained clothes.

"What time is it?" she mumbled.

"Early," he replied in hushed tones. "You can go back to sleep; I'll see you later."

Sam curled herself more tightly into the duvet. "Are you… okay to work… today?"

Dylan's heart thundered. "I'm okay enough." Lying outright to her left a foul feeling behind after the words had left his mouth.

Half-asleep Sam didn't think anything of his decision to go to work. She listened long enough to hear his footfalls down the stairs and the clicks of his key in the front door, before falling comfortably back to sleep.

* * *

Zoe called time on Dylan's attempt to work before it had even begun. She intercepted him outside the ED, and pulled him back from heading inside: once they were in there they'd be overheard. The walls had ears.

"It's not good today, is it?" she said, reaching out and squeezing his forearm while she looked into his eyes.

He broke eye contact with her immediately. Belatedly, he realised that this was possibly more powerful than his answer. "I can't tell anymore. It's all a mess up there."

Zoe hugged him briefly. Perhaps this gesture was more for her than it was for him; he stood stiffly and didn't throw her off, but didn't reciprocate either. "You can't work today, Dylan," she said. "I can't let you, and Connie shouldn't let you either." She bit her lip, wondering if he'd be offended by her next question. It was on that shaky ground between unacceptably patronising and unfortunately helpful. "Have you… have you been taking your meds?"

Instead of answering, Dylan reached into his jacket pocket, as though he had been expecting this question and had come prepared to prove his innocence. He produced a box of fluoxetine tablets, and showed her that over half of a sheet printed up with days of the week had been popped. "I have been taking them," he said urgently, realising for the first time that she might think he'd been throwing them away instead of diligently swallowing them every morning. "It's… I don't… They're not working anymore, I'm trying my best!" His agitation grew, and he looked away to avoid Zoe's expression of sympathy.

"Okay, I believe you. _I believe you. _I'll sort it, I pr–"

"Don't call Sam," he cut in.

Zoe was stunned. "What?"

"Please, don't call her. Not yet. She was still asleep when I left, please let her sleep. She's going to hate this enough, without being woken up for it. She needs the rest, please," he pleaded.

Zoe's shoulders drooped. She agreed that she would not call Sam yet, though it was for her need of rest and not because she thought that Sam would dislike the situation. If anything, she suspected that the paramedic would want to find out immediately.

* * *

But Sam was already awake. She'd woken shortly after Dylan left for work, but when her phone rang, all remainders of sleepiness disappeared.

"I didn't wake you up, did I?"

Lily's voice was everything that Sam didn't know she needed. She smiled weakly. "No," she replied firmly. "How are things at your end?"

A syllable of laughter came down the phone. "Um, busy! But I'm not calling about work, I'm calling about… No, how are _you_?" She might have been eight hundred miles away, but if anything this made Lily more determined to keep up with things in Holby, especially knowing that Sam was pregnant. (She had been privy to the news before the ED, a fact which she took great pride in, considering the extremely rocky start to her friendship with Sam.)

"I can't say much has changed, apart from the addition of a bump." She half expected a sound of excitement to come in response to this, but it didn't come.

"Oh, Sam, I'm so pleased for you." There was something muted about Lily's tone, indicative of something more pressing on her mind. "I need to ask you something," she said. "But I don't want to worry you, it's just –"

"– I'm pregnant, not infirm!" Sam replied indignantly. She strongly suspected that she knew what was coming next.

"Alright, I'm sorry. Is… Is Dylan okay?"

Sam's pause was probably more telling than anything she might say. "What makes you ask?" Sam felt wary: it couldn't be a good thing that Lily had been alerted from her great distance that all was not well.

"He's ignored my messages for nearly three weeks. I know that he's hardly chatty at the best of times, but something doesn't feel right. Normally I'd get _something _back."

Sam was silent. She had been sitting up in bed, but at this news, the blood drained from her face and she hurriedly lay back, thoughts swirling intensely. If he'd stopped talking to Lily, then that was a red flag. He'd been spiralling for nearly three weeks, and no-one this side of the North Sea had spotted it.

"Are you still there?"

Sam blinked hard until she wasn't seeing stars. "Yes, I'm still here. I'm fine. Look, I'll call you back later, when… When I know what's happening."

* * *

Dylan's phone rang. He stared at it, trapped by the innate fight-or-flight response as soon as he set eyes on the smiling photograph of Sam that always appeared when she called him. How could he explain to her what had happened? How could he speak to her, as the mother of his child, and his future wife, to tell her that he was such a failure that he hadn't even been allowed to start his shift? What was she going to think of him?

When Zoe walked into the room, his panic bubbled higher still. She clocked his expression at once, and noticed his phone ring out. "Dylan, it's okay, it's just me. Who called you?"

He looked at her, eyes wide and fearful. "Sam. She's – I can't – I have to go." He strode out of the room at great pace.

"Stop! Go where?!" Zoe called after him, following him despite his pace in the direction of the exit.

He stopped abruptly and turned around. "Anywhere," he replied blankly. "Far enough away that I can't mess it all up." Without waiting for further input from Zoe, he headed out again.

She lost sight of him in the busy entrance of the ED and it was only meeting Jan and Iain as they unloaded a patient, that directed her to him.

"You looking for Dylan?" asked Jan.

Zoe nodded hastily, her eyes darting around the thoroughfare outside. When both Iain and Jan pointed her in the right direction, she sighed in relief.

Spotting him a good way away from her, she called out. "Dylan!" she said, "don't make me run after you, you know I'm no good in heels –" Her jaw dropped when he stopped and turned to face her. He was still about thirty feet away, but his ghostly complexion was impossible to ignore. His expression frightened her. She'd never seen him so spaced out; it was as though he wasn't aware of where he was, or even that he was looking at his best friend. He opened his mouth to speak but no sound came out. Zoe pushed her own emotions out of the way. He was a patient now, like any other. "It's okay," she said levelly (though she didn't feel it at all.) "Just come back inside – you're… you're not well and I can get you the help you need." Her mouth was dry. She swallowed a painful lump in her throat, watching him seemingly weigh up what to do.

For Dylan, everything went black very quickly. For Zoe, however, watching him black out and collapse on the pavement seemed to take forever. She was rooted to the spot where she stood as he fell for what felt like an age. Propelled back to reality, she threw caution to the wind and sprinted over to him despite her inappropriate footwear. She thanked every one of her lucky stars when she saw that he had already regained consciousness.

He did not, however, look any less afraid, even though he seemed minutely more lucid. "W-where…? What happened?"

Zoe frowned, kneeling at his side. "Don't you remember at all?" she asked with deep concern.

"...Um, I remember the ED, but not leaving."

Zoe's mind was running through options, trying to find an explanation for what had happened. It was an uncomfortable thought indeed that his irrational behaviour, collapse and blank memory might all be tied to one and the same thing.

He was suddenly panic-stricken. "Where's my notebook? I need it, I have to have it – bad things will happen if I lose it."

"I promise you, nothing bad is going to happen," Zoe said, as kindly as she could muster. "Will you come back inside with me, so that I can look after you?" It was so hard to detach herself enough to treat him like this, when all she wanted to do was hide until all this was over.

He nodded in defeat. "Who will tell Sam?" His expression of fear was replaced entirely by sadness He had let everyone down.

"I'll tell her," Zoe said quietly. She put a hand on his arm. "Wouldn't dream of letting anyone else do it."

Carefully, Dylan went to get up from the pavement, but he felt a searing pain shoot up through his left wrist as he did so. He inhaled sharply.

"What is it?"

He tried to wriggle the fingers of his left hand, but found this excruciatingly painful too. He looked down at his wrist. It was already beginning to swell slightly. A broken wrist to match his broken brain. Perfect.

"Let me see," Zoe said, realising too late that her tone was the same as she might use with a vulnerable or upset child. But instead of the protest she expected, Dylan seemed somewhat soothed by it. "It's going to be okay," she said, just about disguising the quiver in her voice. She took his hand and examined it with a feather-light touch that still made him wince. She apologised in a whisper.

"I don't want to go back in there," he said abruptly. He took his hand back from Zoe and held it against his chest, the lest uncomfortable position he could think of. "I know that things are bad. In between the fog I haven't lost so much that I can't see that. But I know what happens next, and I don't know how… I can't handle that. I should be thinking of Sam and the baby, not losing my mind yet again, and..." He began to fidget as his breaths sped up: just like that, his moment of clarity was gone. "I can't do it, I can't do it, I can't do it!"

Zoe sat down beside him. "I know that you can do it. And when the fog clears, I think you know that you can do it as well. You've faced this before and you're strong enough to face it again. But I will sit here with you for as long as it takes for the fog to clear."

* * *

Sam was beside herself with worry when Zoe's number flashed up on her phone. She seized it at once, barely able to tap the screen in the right place in her haste.

"What's happened?" she said, sparing the niceties of a phone call out of pure desperation.

"I can't explain it all over the phone," Zoe began, "but he's not well – something has changed and he's… he's all over the place, to tell you the truth. I think you should be here."

Sam bit her lip. "How bad is it? Don't sugarcoat it."

"You know I wouldn't even try. But I – this is so hard – I don't think he can go home tonight, I'm so sorry." She heard a choked sound from the other end of the phone. "Sam? Everything okay?"

"I'm fine," Sam replied. "I'll be there as soon as I can."

* * *

Zoe's patience had run out. Trying to address this calmly with Connie had got her nowhere.

"You have to do something!" she exploded. "This isn't something we can sit and watch to see where it goes – you've seen him go downhill before and you can see that this isn't the same!"

"Zoe, he's an adult, I can't just make a decision and force it on him."

Zoe ran a hand messily through her hair. "Open your eyes! If I called psych down here, then he wouldn't have a choice in the matter. We'd be looking at a section most likely." She paused and looked away, deeply uncomfortable. "I don't know if you've even seen… the utter _carnage_ of a member of your team being sectioned in front of you, but I sure as hell don't want to see it a second time." It had been years, but she still wouldn't forget Ruth Winters. The circumstances were different but to imagine Dylan going through that, didn't bear thinking about.

Connie's face fell. She clasped her hands in front of her, worry making her a hundred times more human.

"It's that bad. I promise you that it's every bit that bad." She stopped pacing and sat down heavily. She pinched the bridge of her nose. "_Please. _Please, Connie, do something."

* * *

By the time she arrived at the ED, Sam thought she had mentally prepared herself to see Dylan. But seeing his immense distress made her throat ache like it was going to explode. He sat on the cubicle bed with his knees half-drawn up, clearly more than a little preoccupied with everything happening in his head. His hair was messy; he'd obviously raked his hands through it multiple times without considering the consequence of this. His sleeves, although rolled to his elbows, weren't equal like they usually were. One side of his neck was red. She knew that he rubbed there sometimes when he was anxious.

She hesitated at the foot of the bed, momentarily questioning whether he'd even want her there. "Hi," she said after some deliberation. "It's me."

His focus slid back into the room. He blinked at her. "I know it's you," he said plainly.

There was more than a small flash of her Dylan in those four words. She risked a half-smile and sat on the end of the bed, before changing her mind and turning to face him fully, crossing her legs. It was only when she reached out to take his hands that she was confronted with the biggest shock so far – the blue cast on his hand and forearm. "What _happened_?" Her eyes were wide as she asked, and she watched his cheeks colour.

At that moment, the curtains around the cubicle were partly pulled back.

"Sam, have you got a minute?"

It pained her greatly, but she nodded. "I'll come back," she said softly to Dylan. She kissed his forehead and took comfort from the small release of tension he seemed to show afterwards.

If it had been any voice other than Zoe's, she would have probably refused to leave Dylan's side. But she obediently followed her friend out of the cubicle – it surprised her when they bypassed the relatives' room entirely and instead she was lead to the Clinical Lead's office.

"Zoe?"

"We'll explain, it's okay sweetheart."

In that moment, Sam knew that the news she was about to get would be Bad News. Zoe had subconsciously slipped into the mode of doctor delivering news, and automatically applied one of the gentlest things she could say. If Sam had had a lump in her throat on seeing Dylan, it was nothing compared to the choking sensation she felt as Connie invited her to sit, while she and Zoe positioned themselves on either side of her.

When Sam spoke, it felt like someone else was moving her mouth and controlling her speech. "What happened to his arm?" She'd thought this would be the simplest question to answer, but Zoe's sigh as she considered what to say made her begin to worry. It wasn't until she felt Zoe's hand on her knee that she noticed she was shaking.

"Dylan never started his shift this morning," Connie began. "Zoe came to me first thing and recommended that I pulled him from the rota."

"He was… I've never seen him like that before," Zoe added. "He was so agitated, and something… I don't know what it was, something spooked him and he ran..."

Sam felt tears prick her eyes. It was a pure impulse that one hand travelled immediately to her stomach. For a moment, she squeezed her eyes shut and just breathed.

"I'm sorry, Sam," Zoe went on, "I know this can't be easy to hear. I went after him, and… he blacked out. That's where the cast comes in – distal radius fracture, pure and simple now it's straightened and supported."

"Pure and simple," Sam murmured. "Let me guess, the rest of it couldn't be further from."

"Unfortunately not," Connie said. "We've done all the tests; there's no other reason for his collapse than for it to be psychogenic." She paused, knowing that this could be difficult to take in.

Sam put her head in her hands. "I knew things were bad," she said, her voice muffled a little by her position. "I tried so hard last night, but he didn't fit the criteria for the crisis team."

Zoe rubbed her fingertips across her lips. Connie, recognising how much this would affect both women (and being especially mindful that one of them was pregnant) shot Zoe a kind glance before putting a caring hand on Sam's shoulder. "You did everything you could. You've nothing to feel guilty about in the least. But it's… it's gone further now that just you can handle."

Sam let out an involuntary sob. "Inpatient," she whispered, returning a hand to 'hold' her unborn baby.

Connie winced. "Yes. I've been in touch with an old friend, someone I once work with. She runs a unit in London now, specialising in OCD, and there's a space, if that's –" She stopped herself short of saying _If that's what he wants._

"The thing is," Zoe said, picking up the conversation gingerly, "he _has _to go."

"I know that," Sam replied. She sat up and wiped her eyes, putting her stoic mask back where it belonged.

Zoe frowned sadly. "No, I mean – Sam, if he doesn't go voluntarily, then Psych will get involved, and he won't have the choice of where to go or when to go."

Sam covered her mouth as the weight of Zoe's words dawned on her. "You can't! I won't let them section him! Zoe, I –"

Zoe took both of Sam's hands in her own. "You know that's not how it works, sweetheart," she said, her voice bittersweet. Most people, she'd noticed, looked older when the weight of the world had been placed on their shoulders, but not Sam. Somehow the tension had stripped years away; she seemed even a little younger than the registrar Dr Nicholls who'd first arrived in Holby.

"What do I do?" Her eye contact with Zoe was desperate and piercing.

"You make sure he knows what's at stake," came the meaningful reply. Zoe couldn't say what she was thinking. _You talk him into going voluntarily, you make sure come hell or high water that he goes of his own accord._

"Sunara can take him tomorrow morning. You can travel with him, it's all on your terms," Connie explained. "If it goes… the other way, then the Section will take time to process, and he could end up on the psych ward here for days before a place can be found elsewhere." She had to lay it bare, and block from her mind that the patient in question was a colleague whom she valued greatly.

"I'll do it."

* * *

Though everything had been turned upside down, she returned to Dylan with renewed confidence. At least now there was a plan. However, it remained a difficult thing to see him so zoned out. He was clutching a notebook as though it was his lifeline.

"Dylan?"

He looked ashamed of himself when his focused returned to reality and he realised what he'd been doing.

"I told you I'd come back," she said with a gentle smile. She returned to where she'd been sitting before, mirroring his now-cross-legged position.

"I've never been – I've never been so bad that… Zoe had to tell me that I'm not well, like I'm a patient." He looked crestfallen.

She hugged him, and there was enough of him left that he hugged her in return. "You might not thank me for saying this, but you have to be a patient for a little while." She gauged his reaction before continuing. Disappointed, more than anything else. "Have Zoe and Connie explained what's going to happen now?"

"Yes. They said…" There was a pause. "Oh, bloody hell, I can't even remember that, and it was minutes ago!"

"It's alright," Sam comforted. "You can be excused not having your pinpoint-accurate memory while all this is happening." She explained it all to him, slowly and carefully, and had him repeat it back to her to make sure he'd at least set it _somewhere _in that marvellously messy mind of his. She had a final question for him, before the difficult business of saying goodbye. "What's in the notebook?"

He crumpled. "I… I kept t-telling you that I was fine," he said quietly, unable to look at her.

"I know," Sam replied. "I know, and I don't mind." Her voice was soft.

Dylan met her eyes with a frown. "But you should," he urged. "You should hate me – it was… I lied to you, every time."

"I'm never going to hate you," Sam said firmly. "Please show me."

After what felt like an eternity, his grip on the notebook relaxed. Sam still checked, with gentle eye contact and a raised eyebrow, if he would let her take it from him.

The lined pages were crammed with lists. But they didn't quite make sense – there was no logical start and finish, and in places the words overlapped. She was so used to Dylan's immaculate block capitals being easy to read that it came as a shock to see this outpouring of… well, she couldn't understand what it was.

"I couldn't cope with the chatter anymore," he said.

That was when it all, heartbreakingly, clicked into place. The compulsions had been rare before she'd found out she was pregnant, but from time to time there'd still been small moments where it was still very clear that he was working hard to manage his OCD. But ever since that little white stick had shown a positive result, it had been total radio silence. The compulsions had vanished, outwardly, but they'd all still been there – he'd just kept them tightly under wraps.

_It had all been in his head._

_It had all been still there, but he had fought to keep it contained in his head._

* * *

That evening, Sam silenced her phone. She knew it was a stupid idea, what with Dylan being admitted overnight, but she needed peace that she just wouldn't get with messages pinging through from people worrying about her. It had been a long, quiet day since leaving the ED and subsequently the ambulance station, where she'd had to go out of necessity to beg the next day off work. As it turned out, the begging wasn't necessary: on hearing the news, Jan immediately removed Sam from the next two days' shift rotas.

"I would imagine you'll be a little preoccupied for work, on that second day. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Sam. Take the day, and take it for yourself," she'd said, refusing to hear any objections.

Sam hadn't realised she'd been ready to fall asleep, but late in the afternoon she found herself dozing off, after trying to find some peace with a book on her bed. It was the sound of the landline phone that disturbed her at last. She stumbled onto the landing and rubbed her eyes, furiously trying to wake herself up. It was Lily, reliable as ever, calling for an update because it had entirely slipped Sam's mind.

"I really have just woken you up, this time," she remarked on hearing Sam's semi-drowsy greeting. "I didn't know what else to do when you weren't answering your mobile."

Sam pulled her hair back over her shoulder. "I put it on silent," she said simply. "Too much going on."

"What's happened?" Lily asked worriedly.

"I don't even know where to start."

A gentle sigh came down the phone, and the static sound of shifting in a chair to find a more comfortable position. "It's alright, Sam. I've got all the time in the world."


	5. I Don't Want to Miss a Thing

**Not the longest chapter I've written, but for once I'm fairly happy with it! You'll be glad to know that it's fluffy rather than wall-to-wall angst (though I'll be first to admit that perhaps angst is a little easier to write sometimes!) I hope you enjoy :)**

* * *

I Don't Want To Miss A Thing – Hollie Aires [cover of Aerosmith]

21 weeks pregnant

"I wish I could have something a bit more interesting to say, when you ask how I am every day." Sam rested her head back on her pillows, having put her phone on speaker on the bed beside her. If she was prone to flights of fancy, she might have closed her eyes and imagined that Dylan's voice wasn't coming from one hundred and fifty-odd miles away, rather that he was there beside her.

She was still in her paramedic uniform. She'd finished a long day shift, taken Dervla for a walk and thanked her past-self profusely for having the presence of mind to meal-prep over the weekend, before collapsing onto the bed fully-clothed. The half-prepared pasta bake could wait, however, because this time was sacrosanct. That said, it was the last slot of its kind. Tomorrow, things would be different.

"It's of no consequence to me, if you say the same thing every time," Dylan said. He sat on his own bed, leaning against the wall of the room that he'd called his own for the last four weeks. He cradled his phone to his ear and hoped he would always be able to recall this feeling of raw joy and warmth at hearing her voice. "You might have said the same thing to me on repeat, at the beginning, and I'd hardly have known." Despite the dark days at the beginning of his inpatient stay, he could recognise the progress exemplified by the return of his self-deprecation. "Don't forget that I've _asked _you the same question every day, too. And I still care about your answer."

Sam sighed. "I'm tired. Still. I'm sure I could sleep for three days straight and Splodge would still zap all my energy within about an hour."

Dylan let out half a laugh, a brief expulsion of air through his nose. "Careful now, don't be disparaging Splodge's superpower. She puts a lot of effort in to drain you so superbly."

"You know, at some point, we're going to have to stop calling her Splodge and actually giver her a name," Sam said thoughtfully, curling round in her horizontal position to smile fondly at the bump.

"Really? I thought we were sticking with Splodge Keogh," Dylan said drily.

She'd missed that for so long, his caustic, deadpan comments that could cut a conversation dead with those who weren't familiar with him. "I've missed you," she said eventually.

"I give it a week, once I'm home, and you'll want rid of me again. You've clearly forgotten how much of a nightmare I am to live with."

"Maybe you are, sometimes," Sam admitted, "but it's far worse not having you around. One day, in four and a half weeks, that's all I've seen you. And _I've missed you._ I've been counting down the days, Dylan, I need you back."

She missed everything. It wasn't even about the single day in four and a half weeks – it was the pure and simple pain of doing everyday things and realising that he wasn't there. Waking up in the morning, having breakfast, going to work, being at work, coming home from work, walking the dog, watching TV, reading, going to bed. The cycle had repeated, Sam going solo, for the duration of Dylan's inpatient treatment. And God, it had been so necessary for him to have it, but for him to be so far away had not been easy, for either of them.

He was about to poke fun at her, when in the nick of time his eyes fell on the last list – the one that he'd stayed in control of, not added to and not taken to extremes of thought. The list of numbers, each one crossed off until finally the number one remained uncrossed. His own countdown to discharge day.

* * *

It was the last night of separation, so it should have been easy. But Sam was restless. Time seemed to pass so sluggishly that she was almost grateful to be so tired: perhaps sleeping the hours away would make them pass a little faster. However, despite being bone-tired, once she lay in bed her mind raced like a child's on Christmas Eve, not to mention that Splodge seemed suddenly wide-awake too. Sam picked up her phone and sat up against her pillow, pulling the duvet up around her.

_Are you still awake?_

_Of course. Though I didn't expect you to be… What happened to tired?_

_Can't sleep. Too imatpeint._

It was only after sending the message that she realised her tiredness and haste had not combined too well in the texting department. She waited for his reply; it would probably be something condescending about her spelling. But her screen remained dark, until eventually it lit up with a call.

"You know you're incredibly endearing when you're half-asleep?" he said in a low voice. "I assume that random assortment of letters was meant to say 'impatient'?"

Sam grinned sleepily. "I thought you weren't supposed to take phone calls late in the evening?"

"What are they going to do? Throw me out? I think that would be rather moot at this point, wouldn't it?" He might have still been awake, but like Sam he was at least ready for bed if not ready to fall asleep. In truth, he was feeling as restless as her. At one time it had seemed an impossible goal, to go home, but now it was so close it seemed unreachable all over again.

"I suppose it would," Sam mused. "I don't have anything to say, so this might be the shortest call we've had so far." She paused. "I like that your voice will be the last thing I hear, tonight."

Dylan's heart warmed, but he couldn't resist another derisive comment. "That's if Dervla doesn't decide to stick in her tuppence-worth before you fall asleep."

Sam leaned back against her headboard and closed her eyes for a second. He'd probably never understand how much it soothed her, to hear him so relaxed, so much like himself again. They were both silent for a few moments, the static of the phone call the only reminder that each was still there. It wasn't as good as hearing his steady breaths next to her when she woke in the night, but it was still a sound she cherished. It hadn't always been so easy to get him on the phone, this last month or so.

Sam cradled her bump as the baby moved, shifting carefully in her confined space, though the tender moment ended abruptly when the gentle movement was followed by an almost violent roll. It wasn't a sensation that she could describe, and all at once her heart ached for never having shared it with Dylan. She frowned unhappily, blinking away tears. She wanted to conceal her sadness from him, but when she sniffed, the game was up.

"Sam?" he said worriedly. "What's the matter?"

She shook her head before it clicked that he couldn't see her. She lay back down on her side, half-curled up, much sleepier than she had been previously. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean for you to hear that. I'm only hormonal, that's what made me teary. It's just… It breaks my heart that you've never felt your baby move; out of every time that I've missed you, these have been the worst."

"Oh, my darling," Dylan replied softly. It gutted him that he'd been absent for so much – even Sam's learning that she was carrying a baby girl – but far worse was to hear her so upset when he was so far away. "One more night, that's all. And hen we have so much time to share before she arrives. I will be there with you for all of that, and I will be there with you by tomorrow afternoon. I love you, Sam."

She took a slow breath. "I love you too. I'm sorry for all this on your last night away," she said guiltily.

He sighed. Unease rippled deep inside him, but he'd never tell Sam as much. She was only worrying because of him. He was ruining everything, it was his fault, something was going to go wrong, he was ruining –

No. He took a breath. _Challenge the thought. Think of the facts of the matter. Challenge the thought._

"You haven't put anything on me," he said firmly. "I think you need some sleep." He could focus on his own messy mind later; now was for looking after Sam as best he could from so far away.

"I know I do. Until tomorrow then, my love."

"I'll give you tomorrow. Always."

* * *

Time moved just as slowly the next morning. Sam tried to eat breakfast, knowing that Dylan wouldn't be overly impressed with how many times she'd skipped the most important meal of the day, of late. But this morning especially, she could not stomach it. She pushed the cereal around the bowl under Dervla's reproachful gaze.

"I'm trying, alright?!" she said, stubbornly shoving a final spoonful into her mouth. A few moments later, the remainder of the bowl found its way to the bin. Sam's stomach fluttered madly, a combination of nerves, shreddies and tiny baby.

Her phone buzzed on the table. It made her jump in the quiet room, but she forgave its intrusion on seeing Dylan's name appear on the screen.

_Something is in our favour at last – GWR is not delayed! My heart beats faster when I think of coming home… Before you say anything, it is not anxiety but my unrelenting relief at coming home to you at last and drawing a close to this hideous separation. I love you (as per or maybe more today) and cannot wait to hold you again._

Sam smiled to herself, her insides warmed by his words. It was an unquenchable feeling, a glow like the determined embers towards the end of a fire.

"Your daddy can be very good with words, when he wants to be," she murmured, stroking her stomach. "With any luck, some of that eloquence might rub off on you."

* * *

To her immense disappointment, the train station was crammed with people. Not only would this be an awful environment for Dylan to return to, but it left very little room for reunions. Though she would never publicly admit it (she was sure that only Dylan knew) Sam was a sucker for the kind of romance that films could conjure in train stations. The delicious moment of reuniting on a comfortably bustling platform was enough to make her weak at the knees. Overly feminine though she found that turn of phrase, sadly there was no alternative to suit. Those moments were her hamartia. The very idea was beautiful, that two people could be so connected that to finally be together again was enough to effectively pause the rest of the world. It might be an environment akin to sardines in a can, and they might be jolted on all sides, but to them, the rest of the world ceased to exist.

She secretly hoped for her own movie-moment. She'd certainly not had one on visiting Dylan in London, towards the start of his inpatient stay.

Just as the platform began to clear, the next train pulled up. Sam felt adrenaline flush her system as she stood up, scanning the thronging crowd in hope of spotting him quickly and spiriting him away from this mass of bodies and suitcases and noise. Her heart rose into her throat and her baby girl fluttered in alarm. What kind of disaster might have happened that morning, to prevent him returning with no notice given? She was moments away from reaching for her phone, when she suddenly caught a glimpse of his face in the crowd. At once, she relaxed insofar that her panic was replaced by pure, innocent excitement. She took care to keep a lid on it though, for his sake.

He caught her eye and lifted his chin a fraction, a silent signal that he'd seen her.

She hadn't expected him to keep working his way through the flow of people to get to her – she'd expected to wait for the platform to almost clear. It was impossible not to be a little thrilled that he was able to push himself enough to do so.

It was wonderful to see him again. He was a little thinner, a little paler, a little more cautious. But undoubtedly he was _her _Dylan once again, and at least twenty shades braver than when she had seen him last. When he finally stood in front of her, having steered her out of the path of the masses, she smiled. Her cheeks coloured as she felt his gaze slide down to her stomach, which had grown considerably in their time apart.

There was a moment's silence, during which Dylan stood stock still and worried that he'd lost whatever rights to Sam that he might have had before, despite their phone call in the countdown to his discharge. It was a sweet relief when she wordlessly wrapped her arms around him, something that was a pleasure to reciprocate.

"I've missed you," he mumbled into her hair. It was a superfluous comment, really. "I've missed you so much."

Sam stepped fractionally back from their embrace, and met his eye. She was trying to take his mental temperature through his eyes, he could tell. But her question took him by surprise.

"Can I kiss you?" she asked.

Dylan's eyebrows furrowed softly. In that moment, it was as though they had stepped back in time and they were at King's again, uncertain over the rules of their relationship as much as they were certain that they could not exist apart. When he realised why she was asking, the innocence in her tone meant hundreds of times more. It appeared that he was not the only one to fear that certain elements of their relationship had been rescinded.

"Samantha," he said quietly, maintaining his touch on her jacket sleeves. "I still love you. The idea of absence making the heart grow fonder most emphatically applies, here."

He pressed his lips to hers, and Sam got her movie-moment. The rest of life carried on around them, chatty teenage girls returning from a shopping trip in the capital, businessmen pushing through with briefcases, elderly couples delicately making their way to the taxi rank. But the station could have been empty, for all the attention they paid it. All that mattered was that they were locked together, holding each other with the intention of not letting things get so bad again that they'd be required to be apart.


	6. Wait

Wait – M83

32 Weeks + 3 days pregnant

**I love this song. It features in the soundtracks of two very good films, The Fault in Our Stars and Five Feet Apart, and I've always wanted to write something based on it. This chapter has been half-formed in my head since I first had the idea for this fic; it's an important one...**

* * *

Things were calm again. At least, as calm as they could be considering the closening arrival of Dylan and Sam's daughter. It had surprised almost everyone that Sam had seemingly settled so easily into the impending role that motherhood offered her. In truth, however, she had only slowed down to the pace everyone deemed acceptable, after a stiff talking to from her boss.

* * *

_Sam had pale shadows under her eyes. Jan noticed, after observing her for a minute or so, that having leaned on her elbow for a while at the edge of the table, Sam's eyes were unfocused, and were trying to droop closed. The older woman raised her eyebrows to no-one in particular. Time to make a point._

"_Iain, will you do a med check on the ambulance please? Sam, there's some paperwork we need to go through, about your mat leave."_

_Sam was less than impressed; Iain was hardly out of the room before she was up from her chair and registering her indignation. "It's all done," she tried to argue, "and I'm not bringing it forward, no way – I don't need –"_

_Jan held up a hand to stop her. "Of course it's all done. Would you sit down, I don't need you bouncing all over my ambulance station, getting yourself worked up! I know you, I know you exist to do your best and you don't want to hear what I'm about to say, but I also know you want to take care of that baby of yours, the best you can. And right now I'm a little concerned about whether you're pushing yourself too far. How many weeks are you now, Sam?"_

_The younger woman thought for a moment, realising guiltily that if she wasn't so tired she would not have to think so hard about the question. "Thirty, almost thirty-one."_

_Jan nodded, her firmness softening. "Are you sleeping alright at the moment?"_

_Sam let out a long sigh. "I hope that's not a serious question. I feel like I'm hardly sleeping at all, even though I know I should be sleeping now as I'll have even less once Splodge arrives."_

_The corners of Jan's mouth turned upwards. She had not heard Sam refer to her baby as 'Splodge' before, but the warmth with which she said it was something quite special. "You can't be the best at everything, Sam. Stop putting so much pressure on yourself, and sleep might come a little easier. Besides, if pregnancy was supposed to be easy, it would be a man's job." She winked, and waited for Sam's face to crease into a tired smile. "Look, I'm not going to force you to bring your mat leave forwards, but I want you to decide for yourself, that you're going to reduce your hours between now and finishing. It's not going to get any less difficult from here, and I don't want you to keep pushing further than you can realistically go, okay?"_

_Sam nodded. It was rather difficult to say no to Jan, when what she said made so much sense, and sounded so appealing. _

* * *

Sam had maintained throughout her entire pregnancy that just because she was having a girl, did not mean she wanted everything of her daughter's to be pink. However, at Dylan's insistence, she had conceded to allowing one wall of the nursery to be painted a dusty pink, while the others were a pale, soft grey. The room was nowhere near complete, the most recent addition being wall stickers of ducks above one skirting board. A steadily growing collection of clothes was yet to be sorted, but there was at least one complete element in the room: a chair by the window. When Sam was feeling particularly impatient, she liked to sit there and just imagine what was to come. She'd noticed too that Dylan would often take himself up there when he felt overwhelmed or anxious, which thankfully had become a rarer occurrence.

* * *

One evening, she realised that he had been gone for longer than usual. She was weary from her day's shift so it was difficult to peel herself from the sofa, but she was drawn upstairs despite the soreness in her back that seemed worse that day than after other shifts.

The scene that greeted her in the nursery was one of utter carnage. She leaned on the door frame and took in Dylan's kneeling form, surrounded by tiny babygros, vests and sleepsuits. Some were folded, others lay flat on the carpet. The only thing Sam knew for certain was that all of them had previously been put away and contained in the chest of drawers next to their daughter's cot (or, where the cot would eventually be – its component flat-pack parts stood against the wall.)

"Dylan?" she said softly. She had a horrible, sick feeling in her stomach as she predicted the reason for this sudden need to check and tidy a mess that he had created. "Dylan, look at me?" The brief glance he gave her was too telling.

"I'm sorry, I needed to. I just wanted to get it over with," he said guiltily.

Sam's face fell, and in a moment she was down on the floor opposite him. His hands were clasped around a yellow sleepsuit, fidgeting with the poppers, but she worked her fingers underneath his. "You could have called me," she said kindly. "You _should _have called me," she corrected. "Let me help?" She ignored the sharp twinge in her lower back when she leaned across to pick up a loose pile of clothing. "What do you need me to do?"

"I counted it all," he mumbled. "I made lists – I know I'm not supposed to do that anymore, but –"

"Hey, hey, it's okay. I won't tell if you don't, okay? Is it really bad, compared to what's happened before?"

"No." He said it quickly, but he was too genuine for it to be a lie. "But it's there."

"How can I help?"

His eyebrows furrowed. "You don't have to, you need to rest."

"I know I don't have to. But I am going to. What do you need me to do?"

He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. OCD's stranglehold was loosening. He could see a little more clearly now. "I think… I think we should put this away now."

It was easier said than done, but there they stayed for an hour or more, quietly re-folding all the baby clothes so they could be returned to the chest of drawers. The time was lengthened by repeated counting, but Sam said nothing of it. Things _were _better now. This was a bump in the road, not the whole road. She wondered though, how many more times the clothes might see the light of day before meeting the skin of a newborn. It was entirely reasonable for Dylan to be anxious about the impending arrival – she had a big enough knot in her own stomach when she thought about it for too long.

* * *

By the time they made it to bed, Sam was practically dead on her feet, and fell asleep almost immediately.

But an hour later, she was awake again, and not happy about it. The discomfort in her back hadn't eased; it began to worry her a little. She remained in bed, eager not to disturb Dylan, who needed the sleep to recover from the panicky evening. Shifting her position, she felt a little more comfortable and closed her eyes again.

It was light and fitful sleep.

At half past five in the morning, Sam was awoken with a sharp pain that radiated across her stomach. All at once, the dimly-lit room began to blur and change until it was the bedroom in the house in Catterick, not the bedroom in Holby. She was alone in the room and miscarrying. She cried out, shaking with upset and fear, tears pouring down her face until her view of Catterick faded away. The sight of Dylan waking up beside her, confused by her noise, brought her level of worry down a little.

"Sam? Okay?" he asked.

"I don't know," she replied, reaching for him by the light of her bedside lamp. She clung to him, certain that she wouldn't lie to him. She needed it out of her head. "I… I felt something, and for a minute I was… I was back in Catterick. It felt the same as – you know, that."

He hung his head. He knew. "It was a nightmare, that's all, you –" He stopped dead as Sam's face crinkled in pain.

Sam swore under her breath. "My god… I should never have ignored it. My back has been hurting since I came in from work – I thought it was just normal end of the day stuff and now the pain's moved. I'm scared, so, so scared. I think… I think I might be going into labour."

Dylan's first impulse was to panic, of course. But after only a few seconds, he'd employed every ounce of strength he'd accumulated since being discharged, and pushed the panic away. Sam needed him to be strong, and his first response did not have to be panic. Remembering the mistakes he'd made, all those years ago in Catterick, he chose his words carefully. "We're going to get through this together, no matter what happens next."

* * *

Carefully made plans hadn't even entered the equation yet. Thirty-two weeks and three days was too soon, not that there was much choice in the matter once Sam's waters had gone while Dylan was on the phone to her midwife.

They were both silent on the journey to the hospital. The radio was an affront too many, so the only sound was an occasional hiss of pain from Sam, and a murmur of encouragement in return, from Dylan.

When they arrived at the hospital, Dylan hurried around to the other side of the car to help Sam out. She paused with her feet just touching the floor and he assumed it was for another contraction, so it was a surprise when she looked up at him with mournful eyes.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry that I couldn't get it right. I had my second chance and still I couldn't –" She let out a frustrated, heartbroken, pained sound. "I couldn't keep my baby safe for long enough."

Pushing down his own deep-seated unease, Dylan spoke firmly. "That's enough of that. What's happening now, is not your fault. _This is not your fault, Samantha. _You did not make this happen – not even my pathetic attempt at staying on the straight and narrow made this happen. _Que sera, sera._"

"Whatever will be, will be," Sam whispered. Having Doris Day lyrics circling in her head was certainly more pleasant than morbid worries for her baby's safety, though the illusion of calm was shattered with the next contraction, stronger than the ones before it. Things were moving along.

* * *

At one o'clock that afternoon, Dylan made his way down to the ED in a daze.

"Dylan, what are you doing here?" Connie lost her professional façade in a heartbeat on seeing one of her consultants appear in the stairwell in jeans and a jumper, wearing such an expression of shock that she didn't want to predict what had happened.

He concentrated on her for a moment, words slowly trickling from his mind to his mouth. "I need to speak with you – now, if you're not… if you're not busy."

"Of course, of course," she said, leading him to her office.

Halfway there, Dylan stopped. "Is Zoe here?" He didn't have the wherewithal to remember his friend's shift pattern."

"Um, yes. Yes, she is," Connie replied, her heart sinking. "I'll let you into my office, and find her."

* * *

Connie, usually brisk and to-the-point at all times, couldn't summon her usual persona in her search for Zoe. It was a relief to spot the consultant leaving the staffroom, rather than find her in the middle of a critical procedure. "You need to come with me, please. Dylan's just appeared – I think he's come down from Maternity."

Zoe's face fell. "Oh no. No, no, no. She's only… thirty-two weeks along."

"He hasn't told me anything yet – he asked for you to be there too."

"I don't think he's got good news, then," Zoe said, clasping her hands then smoothing her skirt.

* * *

Zoe had seen Dylan in all kinds of distress, but this seemed different. He stared into space until she caught his attention with a gentle hand on his knee, then seemed to draw himself out of of his depths of worry. In an instant, he had forced himself to return to his usual stature, sitting straight in the chair. The only giveaway was his tired, mildly devastated face.

"Dylan, what's happened?" she asked quietly, taking the lead from Connie, who seemed not quite to know how to have this conversation though she was an important party to it.

"I, uh, I have a daughter. Sam had our baby girl this morning. Eight and a half weeks prem." There was a very silent pause. "I came to ask… if I can have my leave now, rather than when we originally planned."

Connie sprang back to action. "Of course you can, and you're not to give this department a second thought in the process," she said earnestly.

"Right," Zoe added. "We will make it work here come hell or high water, but what's important is that you go back upstairs and be there for Sam and your little girl."

Dylan nodded. "She's so small," he said helplessly, "and there's nothing I can do."

"I know it may feel that way," Connie said, "but as she gets stronger, there will be things you can do. Premature babies are a waiting game, predominantly, but you will be able to do _something_." She paused for a moment. "I'll leave you two. I'm going to make the necessary arrangements, and I will also make sure that Jan is aware of the situation."

"Thank you," Dylan mumbled with a grateful nod. When the door swung shut behind Connie, he relaxed fractionally. "I don't have anything to say. I can't say '_mother and baby are doing well' _because that would be a blatant lie, and frankly I am jealous of anyone who has the chance to say that."

"Oh, Dylan," Zoe said. She turned where she sat and hugged him, hard. She was quite sure that his stuttering sigh concealed an anguished sob. "I know you think I won't want to hear it, but if it gets it out of your head, then just tell it. If you can find the words, then say it."

* * *

It seemed an unreachable quest, to find the words to describe what had happened. The idea that he and Sam had both failed to realise that her labour had probably started last night was entirely abhorrent, but it was all overshadowed by the traumatic events in the delivery suite. A tiny baby, barely able to breathe for herself, who could not even be comforted by her mother in her first moments. Blood. Too much blood. Dylan had been torn, between following his daughter as she was whisked away to neonatal intensive care, and supporting his fiancée, who for all intents and purposes was bleeding out but delirious in her insistence that he should follow their baby. He had stayed with Sam in the end, waiting for relief as her post-partum haemorrhage was dragged under control.

* * *

"Does Little Girl Keogh have a name yet?" Zoe asked, desperate to change the subject. "Although, I think you'd be excused for not being ready yet."

Dylan's mouth turned slightly upwards for the first time that day. "Actually, she does. Not like us to be organised, I know, but somehow... it happened." He told her quietly, mildly embarrassed.

Zoe smiled. "Then you definitely should go back and be with her. Little one needs to know her pretty name, and that there's a whole emergency department standing behind her, wishing her well."

* * *

He made it as far as the stairs before the weight of the morning's events came crushing down on top of him. He sat on the stairs, mostly out of sight of the ED (or so he thought) in stunned silence. He'd never realised how heavy the weight of responsibility would be, on becoming a father. Especially a father to such a fragile baby. Though he knew there was next to nothing he could do to protect her fate, he still felt entirely responsible for her every breath. And he hadn't even found the guts to see her in the NICU yet. He put his head in his hands, elbows resting on his knees.

"This isn't your fault, you know," David said, sitting carefully next to Dylan.

Dylan sat up, frowning in confusion.

"I hope you don't mind – I overheard Connie and Zoe. Something about being quiet, people assume you don't hear anything, either."

"News will travel eventually," Dylan conceded. "How did you know that's what I was thinking?"

David looked at him. "Because I know you."

Dylan let out a small expulsion of air through his nose. "I thought you hated me."

"No," David said firmly. "I hate what you _did. _In France. Five years ago. I do not hate you." He waited for this to sink in. "And even if I did, I think I would be prepared to let it go, considering the circumstances. You've unfortunately found yourself in a scenario that rather depends on knowing that people have your back."

* * *

There were times when Dylan wished his medical knowledge could be switched off.

Harriet Étaín Keogh was three pounds and ten ounces, a little smaller than most babies at that stage of gestation.

Gazing at his tiny, fragile daughter in her incubator, it was murder not to be able to pick her up. In the space of a few hours he had developed a simultaneous urge and fear around holding his daughter. He wanted nothing more than to hold her, despite her tubes and wires that kept her alive, but it was exactly all those that terrified him so much. He sat with a hand on the incubator instead, though transparent plastic was hardly a substitute for skin-to-skin contact.

When he spotted that she clutched the tentacle of a tiny yellow octopus in her hand, he rested his head down too. A tear trickled from one eye.

"Hattie, you are so loved," he whispered. "Be strong, because currently sweetheart, Daddy is terrible at it."


	7. Hospital Lights

**Hey, new chapter at last! Hope you enjoy it x**

* * *

Hospital Lights - Clean Cut Kid

6 days old

The first night, going home without Hattie had been torturous. Sam may have been physically strong enough to leave the hospital after her post-partum haemorrhage, but nothing could have prepared her to leave the maternity ward without the car seat and tiny bundle of life that seemed to accompany every other set of departing parents that she saw.

It didn't get easier. On the ninth of December, the rest of the street had begun to twinkle with Christmas lights, though the season had not reached Dylan and Sam's house. There was a strange quietness between them, and in the past it would have driven them apart. But not any more. Despite still being sore from the birth, Sam craved closeness – if she couldn't have it with her baby then she would have it with Dylan as far as possible.

"I can't stand this," she mumbled, shaking her head. She was leaning against Dylan, but shifted slightly as she spoke.

He winced inwardly, listening to her quiet, sharp intake of breath. "Careful," he said softly. He wrapped a hand around hers; there was nothing to say that hadn't been said before. He hated the separation from Hattie too, but the weight of it was crushing Sam. The neonatal nursing team had gently commented to them both that their unease would settle, that they would find a way to be used to being at home without Hattie, but neither of them felt as though they wanted to be used to it. They hadn't been quite ready for the role of parents yet, but now they were deprived it, they wanted it more than ever. "We'll see her again in the morning, first thing," Dylan assured her, though it was a comfort for himself too.

Sam had not been sleeping well at all since coming home. Six days of weary sleeplessness caused by worry had taken their toll on them both, but she was also dealing with raging hormones and a mind that couldn't be soothed by the constant presence of a newborn. It was near impossible for her to settle into a state of calm during the day, never mind at night. As a consequence, she was far more emotional, far closer to the edge. "But she's my baby," Sam mourned. "I want my baby."

"I know," Dylan replied, the words sticking in his throat. "I know you do, sweetheart; I want her too." He held her hand a little tighter when he felt her tremble in his arms.

Sam's throat began to close – she knew her next words would come out distorted by sobs. "I need her, Dylan," she cried. She couldn't verbalise the vast feeling of emptiness that came from being unable to hold her daughter. It wasn't far to the hospital, but it might as well have been hundreds of miles. "I don't know how we left her today," she went on, hiccuping slightly between every few words. "There's something wrong, I can feel it. There's something wrong, and I'm not there with her!" Her heart ached with the heavy angst of powerlessness.

"You don't know that there's anything wrong, Sam," he murmured, rubbing her arm soothingly. It would be insensitive and futile to suggest that she might feel better in the morning. Despite his words to the contrary, a seed of worry was growing in his own mind. What if Sam was right? What if Hattie really was poorly, and she didn't have her mummy and daddy with her? He held Sam firmly, both of them wrapped up in their thoughts until the phone rang.

Dylan frowned. No-one ever called the landline. He tried to push obtrusive thoughts out of his mind; only the sight of Sam's frightened eyes gave him the strength to get up and answer the phone with some semblance of resoluteness.

* * *

When he returned from the hall, Sam could read his face like a book, and it made her heart sink. She took in his minutely-slackened jaw and his sombre eyes.

"Tell me."

"Samantha, please don't panic," he said quietly, his face as serious as she'd ever seen it. He was trying to deliver the news like a doctor, but the contrast between his tone and his face was striking.

"I knew it." There wasn't even time to point out the utter hypocrisy in his saying _don't panic_. But his desperate plea had tugged at her heartstrings, too. "What's happened to her? I knew she wasn't well this afternoon, I knew something was brewing, I never should have left her –" She was up from the sofa and in front of him in an instant.

He put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes just long enough to see through the wild gaze of undeniable mothering instinct, to the frightened young woman underneath it all. "Stop. We're going to the hospital, of course we are, but you need to be strong, for Hattie and… and for me. She's running a temperature that's not coming down, and she needs more help that usual with her breathing."

Time slowed down in that moment. Sam scrunched her eyes shut, pushing one hand messily into her hair. She was oblivious not to the discomfort she had been in just a few minutes earlier.

* * *

Sam had been right in feeling that something was 'off' that afternoon – an infection had somehow made its way unwelcomed into the incubator, holding its fragile occupant hostage.

Hattie was an unhappy and extremely poorly baby.

Sam rushed up to the incubator at once, though Dylan froze a few paces away. He was stunned by the very act of being in the Special Care Baby Unit – it hadn't seemed quite so intimidating a place in the daytime. Now, it was too warm, and the strange lights and sounds emitting from all the machines keeping these precious babies alive seemed so alien to him, despite the obvious similarity to the devices found in the ED. The air was so warm as to stick in his throat, which seemed to have narrowed upon sight of his struggling daughter. Seeing Sam sit desperately by the incubator, her face moulded into an expression of anguish, was a punch in his stomach. He tried to take a step forward but his feet seemed to be too heavy to move. He was distraught at his powerlessness. If she was someone else's baby, he'd be wearing a stethoscope and in total control of this situation, not standing there in jeans, utterly terrified that her next tiny breath might be her last.

"Dylan?"

Sam's voice pulled him out of his head. She was good at that, and always when he needed it most. He pulled his eyes' focus away from the scary sight in front of him, and looked into her frightened eyes instead. His own fears were reflected back at him.

"I'm scared, Dylan," Sam whispered.

He nodded. "Me too, I don't know what to do – I'm supposed to know what's going on, I –"

"No, you're not."

Both of them turned to look at who had spoken. It was Carys, the young neonatal nurse who had been on shift the morning that Hattie was born. She was a comforting presence despite her petite frame. A mass of tight red curls were restrained in a bun on top of her head, and her tortoiseshell glasses elevated her eyes to be the most important part of her face. Her gaze was ever-changing: soft and nurturing could turn to fierce and determined in a heartbeat.

"Dr Keogh, you're not meant to have all the answers, when it's your daughter lying there in front of you," she said, warm kindness in her voice.

Dylan bit his lip, looking towards the floor. He moved closer to Sam, who automatically slid her hand into his.

"I understand that this must be difficult for both of you, having all your medical knowledge and not being able to just _fix _things for Harriet," Carys went on softly. "But no-one here is expecting you to be in control; this is one of the hardest experiences for any new parents to face. All you're _supposed _to be, when you're here, is be here for your baby."

He nodded, fixing his eyes on Hattie's tiny, struggling form. She fidgeted in her plastic cocoon, her eyes closed but face expressing her discomfort. It hurt him deeply to see that she was intubated now, even though it was only likely to be a temporary measure. With the infection trying to take over, CPAP wasn't enough.

* * *

After that, Dylan found a way to compartmentalise his emotions, close them down with enough success that Sam could channel her worry solely into her baby rather than into him as well. Both he and Sam were in it for the long haul, holding near-silent vigil over Hattie as minutes crawled by and her condition barely changed despite the antibiotics joining the battle in her bloodstream.

It took a few hours, but finally, mentally exhausted, Sam fell asleep in the chair closest to the incubator. It relaxed Dylan somewhat, though his heart was still beating too quickly as his attention shifted to focus on Hattie. She too was resting, though hers was fitful and uncomfortable in comparison to her mother's. Her delicate hands opened and closed in frustration, and it took a few moments for him to understand. It wasn't until he saw her grab for her breathing tube that he realised; the little yellow octopus that he had noticed bringing her so much comfort, was out of her reach.

He'd asked about the octopus, that first day. The nurses had smiled – it was a story that never lost its tenderness. The octopuses were made, crocheted and knitted, by volunteers all over the country, to comfort vulnerable babies in their hour of need. The curled tentacles on each little comforter gave the babies something to hold – a valuable distraction from pulling at their vital tubes and wires.

Dylan stood up from his seat, and was about to reach his hands into the incubator when he stopped himself in the nick of time. What if, between using the hand gel on entering the ward and reaching for that little yellow octopus, he'd touched something unclean that would make Hattie's predicament a hundred times worse? He froze, holding his hands out in front of him, before making a beeline for the gents' toilets.

* * *

He scrubbed his hands until they tingled, and still used the antibacterial hand gel as he passed it on his way back to Hattie's incubator. Breathing fast and shallow, he realised he'd barely stopped before going too far with the hand-washing. Of course it had been the OCD forcing him to be so meticulous – he knew rationally that nothing would have jumped onto his hands to harm his baby, but the thoughts would not be quietened. It was with extreme care and caution that he put one hand through the opening in the incubator. With baited breath, he repositioned Hattie's octopus and guided her hand to meet the curled tentacle.

"There you go, my sweet baby girl," he murmured, his voice barely louder than a breath. "You're in quite enough bother already Hattie, without getting yourself into trouble pulling your tubes. We'll have less of that, please, if it's all the same to you." He watched her shuffle where she lay – was she responding to his voice? "You just try and get yourself better, because I'm not sure I'm cut out for many more frights like we've found ourselves in tonight."

When he retook his place in the chair next to Sam's, his heart leapt into his throat. That tiny touch of her hand, that had been the first contact he'd had with Harriet at all. He'd built up such a mental block around touching her, though he knew it was a terrible thing. Sam was well-used to putting her hands in there now, to lay a finger in Hattie's palm or stroke her barely-there hair. But he had been so terrified of doing something wrong that he'd found any excuse to not touch her at all. There was only so much longer that this would stand – once her team deemed her strong enough, he knew Hattie would be cleared for skin-to-skin contact and being held, and what kind of a father would he be if he refused that?

* * *

He sat for a while, trying to tune out the sounds of the ward. Beeps, whirs, alarms, pager buzzes. It all seemed somewhat muted by the late hour, but the semi-quiet was just as uncomfortable. One of his legs started twitching, an uncomfortable vibration as though his brain was overflowing and needed an outlet in the form of this unstoppable pulsing movement. He rubbed his hands over his hair, curling himself over and folding almost in half over his knees. He vaguely recalled a psychological study that proved making oneself smaller could actually increase feelings of discomfort and anxiety.

Abruptly, he stood up. This was instantly regretted when Sam stirred in her sleep, but she didn't wake. Dylan made his way over to the nurse's station. To his relief, Carys was there: he knew from wheedling it out of her, that Sam had made her aware of their situation regarding his OCD, on a need-to-know basis.

"I can't sit here any longer," he said in a low voice, meeting her eye and hoping she caught his drift. "There's too much going on, too much to think about. I'm going for a walk – if anything happens, I don't have my phone, but call down to the ED. That's where I'll be."

Carys nodded with a sympathetic smile. "Of course I will. It's all about waiting tonight, unfortunately, and I can imagine that could get uncomfortable."

She understood what he was getting at in needing to escape the ward, and that alone was a weight off Dylan's shoulders. To anyone overhearing, the conversation was almost encrypted, no real clues at all as to its real meaning.

* * *

He was glad he still had the presence of mind, despite his building anxiety, to remember that Zoe was working the night shift. She had made a well-received effort to stay in touch with him over the last six days; though he had been wrenched from normality, he at least could not feel isolated from it while she tried every day to keep him in her thoughts and show him that this was the case.

Coming down the stairs into the Emergency Department, he passed David, who was heading upstairs. The nurse frowned in concern, and Dylan's shoulders sagged, not knowing quite how to explain. He flinched with surprise when David rested a hand on his shoulder for a moment.

"Wherever your mind is trying to take you, don't let it, not for a moment," he said. "I'm not going to ask you what you're doing here, because it's none of my business, and equally, it's not going to be good news if you're looking for Zoe at two in the morning. But… I hope she's alright. Harriet, I mean."

Dylan nodded sadly. "Thank you."

* * *

Zoe was starting a break, her first since starting work at seven that evening. She expertly stopped her jaw from falling in dismay when she saw Dylan walking towards her. His eyes were a peculiar shade of not-okay, and she was instantly prepared to give up the quiet break she'd thought she was going to have, plus any other time she could steal back from this shift. She was needed – and in that moment, Dylan was no more than a lost and worried relative. It didn't matter that the patient he was concerned for was not one of hers. She waited for his forlorn pace to reach her, before ushering him into the staff room.

"Is it Sam, or Harriet?" she asked. Neither was a good answer. Sam definitely didn't need any further postnatal complications, but Harriet was so fragile that she didn't like to think of anything else going wrong for her. She watched Dylan's face crumple. "Sit down, Dylan," she said softly. As he accepted her invitation, her eyes briefly caught his hands. She could see that he'd washed them, hard. It was so unfair that he had the added distress of OCD, on top of what was already a harrowing experience.

Dylan took an uneven breath. His throat ached and his eyes kept blurring. "Hattie," he replied.

"Oh Dylan, I'm sorry," Zoe said. "What's happened?"

"Infection. She's pyrexic at some ungodly temperature, and they've had to intubate where she only needed CPAP before. She's so poorly, and there is _nothing _that I can do. She's so small, Zoe, she's not big enough to cope in the world as it is and now she's fighting this too."

Zoe sniffed, and rubbed her fingertips across her lips. It was a difficult task, to balance how much Dylan needed a friend with how much he needed someone calm, to be the one with a handle on the situation. "When did you get the call?"

He thought for a moment, mentally calculating. "Um, about quarter to eleven. It's all waiting, waiting for the antibiotics to take, waiting for her temperature to come down, waiting for her breathing to stabilise. I can't do it, not when I've got a thousand horrible outcomes in my head that all seem more likely than her coming out the other side of all of this as a healthy baby."

"Stop," Zoe said firmly. "Stop, you can't let it win. I know you, and there is a part of you that knows how absurd the OCD thoughts are. Grab onto that with both hands, and don't let it go. You have to have hope, as hard as it must be, you have to try and believe that she will be okay." She paused. "How's Sam holding up?"

He looked down at his lap guiltily. "She fell asleep a little while ago. She's not slept properly since I brought her home, and she's finding it so hard being separated from Hattie."

"And you?" Zoe asked at last, though she half-knew the answer. "Are you okay?" There was silence between them, and she left him resting on that question when she stood up and put the kettle on. Pulling two mugs from the cupboard, she could hear him fidgeting where he sat, and she waited for him to grow quiet again before turning around. She couldn't carry on with the supportive/kind/level act, treating him as the patient's relative rather than the best friend, if she saw the extent of his struggle tonight. When all was quiet, the only noise left in the room coming from the kettle, she turned and leaned against the sideboard.

The aching knot in Dylan's throat grew. "That hardly matters," he choked, wringing his hands.

Zoe lost all intentions she had had, of remaining calm and detached. She walked straight over to him and stood in front of him for a moment, before kneeling so she was almost at his seated eye-level. "No. I realise that Sam's had a horrific time since the birth, and the birth itself wasn't what either of you expected. I understand that she will have a different experience to you of seeing Harriet up there on SCBU, because she's her mother. I get it that your daughter is poorly, and vulnerable, and fragile. _But you still matter, Dylan, _do you understand me? Don't let yourself beat you down with words. If you're not coping, that's allowed. If your OCD is flaring because of this, and that would be totally acceptable, but you don't want to say it in front of Sam, then that's fair enough. But it still matters."

"How can it possibly matter?!" he cried. "My daughter is lying up there, fighting for every single breath, and there's –" He stopped for a moment, halted by the explosion of the mammoth lump in his throat into a heart-wrenching sob. "And – there's – there's _nothing _I can do to help her." He bent double, leaning down on his knees and bowing his head. Zoe squeezed her eyes shut, regretting every choice she'd made regarding eye make up, while preparing for work that evening. She quietly stood up and pulled a chair around so she was seated exactly opposite Dylan. Then, she wrapped her hands around his, clasped desperately together as if in prayer though she knew he didn't hold with that.

"I'm so scared," he said thickly.

"And you have every right to be!" Zoe was adamant.

"No," he protested, sitting up, "No, you don't understand – yes, I'm scared for her, of course I'm scared for her. But I – I don't know what's going on, I don't know why I'm so fraught, I can't keep myself in control. I – I feel as though it's trying to come back, my thoughts are everywhere and – and I don't cry but now… Now I'm losing it again." He was _terrified _that he might be losing his mind yet again, and with Sam so vulnerable and little Hattie barely clinging to life, that thought scared him more than it ever had.

"You're not losing it again. I won't let you."

There was silence for a while, punctuated by Dylan's irregular but gradually steadying breaths.

"I just wanted it to be right this time," he said at last. A weight was about to life from his shoulders, a secret he and Sam had kept for far too long, though they'd had precious few people to share it with.

Zoe frowned in confusion. "This time?"

He sighed. "Yes." He rubbed his hands together. "We lost a baby, Sam and I. 23rd April, 2010. It was complicated, not that we could ever have been anything less, back then, but she was back from deployment and we only knew for about eight hours or so that she was pregnant at all, and then..."

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Dylan. I'm so, so sorry." She put her arms around him and hugged him. "Look," she said when they pulled apart, "what you're feeling right now, I don't think it's your OCD coming back. I think it's not far different to how any parent in that SCBU feels in your situation, or anyone who's had to go through the hell of a miscarriage before, come to mention it. You're emotionally going through the wringer at the moment, and it's entirely 'normal' to feel like you can't do anything to change things for your baby. Unfortunately, you have to put your faith in the team looking after her, and they're doing a good job, aren't they?"

He thought for a moment of the concerned but entirely calm young doctor who had called to alert them to Hattie's deterioration. He thought of Sam's midwife, who had been exceptional. He thought of Carys and the other nurses who did everything they could for the babies in their care. And at last, he nodded. Yes, they were doing a good job.

* * *

When he returned to SCBU, he sat on guard by Hattie's incubator. He watched her monitors intently, and eventually their incessant noise because somewhat soothing. At the very least, nothing was changing.

Sam stirred and finally woke when his eyes burned from being forced open for so long.

"No change," he murmured as she transitioned from slumped over asleep to sitting up awake.

"I didn't mean to sleep so long," she said apologetically, pulling at her ponytail.

He shook his head. "Don't apologise, it was four hours at most, and god knows you needed it." He leaned across and kissed her cheek softly. "I went down to see Zoe earlier," he said. His voice was an embarrassed half-whisper. "I wasn't… I wasn't coping very well. And before you say anything, no, I was not going to wake you up for that, not in a million years. Maybe on another day, I might have done, but not tonight."

Sam reached for his hand, her eyes fixed on their daughter. "I'm glad you went looking for help when you needed it. How are you now?" She glanced at his tired face, looking for any sign of untruth.

"Better," he replied, before trying (badly) to conceal a yawn.

"Do yourself a favour, Dylan."

"Hmm?" He pinched the bridge of his nose, his head beginning to ache from prolonged focus.

She looked at him seriously. "Let me take a turn on watch, and get some sleep."

He opened his mouth to argue, but knew it would be useless. It wasn't until he looked down at his wrist and noticed he wasn't wearing a watch, that he realised he had no idea what time it was, or how long he had been awake. Sleep didn't seem all that unappealing.

It was surprising, how quickly he fell asleep against to the soundtrack of SCBU. Perhaps it wasn't surprising that his dreams were permeated with Sam and Harriet.

* * *

A park that he remembered from his childhood.

Long grass, wild flowers, dappled shade from willow trees.

Sam and a tiny doppelgänger making daisy chains in the sun, to wear as summery crowns.

A little girl with a beaming smile, running towards him with arms outstretched.

He bent down to pick her up and –

* * *

"Dylan," Sam said, putting a hand on his arm and rubbing it firmly. "Dylan, wake up!"

He blinked hard, disoriented for a moment while memories pieced themselves together and his presence in SCBU swam into making sense. Soft daylight filled the ward – how long had he slept? He panicked suddenly. "Hattie! What's happened – is she okay?"

Sam smiled and nodded. "She's out of the woods for now. Temperature back to normal, and she should be extubated and back on CPAP by this evening. She's still poorly, but she's okay for now."

Dylan stood up shakily. He drank in the sight of his daughter where she lay. The struggle he'd observed through the night was nowhere to be seen. At last, he smiled a little too, linking hands with Sam as they both felt waves of relief wash over them. It had been a horrible, horrible night, but it was over now.


	8. Walk in the Sun

_Walk in the Sun_ by McFly

6 weeks old

"Good morning, baby girl," Sam said warmly as she and Dylan reached their daughter's incubator. "You look comfy today." She smiled down at Harriet, who responded almost imperceptibly by inclining her head minutely towards her mother's voice. Maybe it was Sam's brain showing her what she wanted to see, but she didn't care.

"Anything to report?" Dylan asked Carys, who had just appeared on her way to hand over to the day shift. He pulled off his coat and unwound his scarf as he spoke: the temperature difference between the ward and the crisp January morning felt enormous.

"You're early," the nurse remarked watching Dylan roll up his shirt sleeves so he was bare below the elbow. "Long day shift?" She waited for the reluctant nod before continuing. "Nothing to report really, another good night. She's getting stronger."

"That's good," said Sam. She pulled her cable-knit jumper over her head and hung it over the back of the chair nearest to Hattie. Her hair was held in a loose French plait, and the friction of the jumper had sent baby hairs flying all over the place. "Any word yet, on whether she'll be off CPAP soon?" It was a question that had weighed heavily on her mind – the expectation had been that Hattie wouldn't need the additional help of Continuous Positive Airway Pressure at this point.

Carys looked down at Harriet Keogh fondly. She had pulled her little yellow octopus close and her left hand was clamped tightly around a curled tentacle. "It's in her notes that she'll be reviewed again today. When the doctor's on her rounds later, I'm sure she'll come and speak to you more." She nodded reassuringly before heading on her way.

* * *

Meanwhile, Dylan had been dousing his hands in sanitiser. One quick cuddle with his daughter before his day truly had to begin, that was what he needed. He could afford a few minutes, before the ED's morning handover.

There was still a shiver of fear up his spine as he reached down to pick Harriet up. Three weeks was not such a long time to have gotten over such a deep fear as he'd had of getting this wrong. But it was all okay again, the moment his tiny baby lay against his chest.

"Come here," Sam said with a small smile. "You've forgotten your buttons." She worked her hands between her baby and Dylan's shirt, to undo the top few buttons so that Hattie could rest against his skin. The effect was instantaneous – both of them were soothed even further.

She left them in their bubble, blind to the rest of the world, for as long as she could. But the fact remained that Dylan had a shift to get to, so after fifteen minutes, Sam reluctantly disturbed the beautiful image beside her.

"Dylan," she said softly.

He doubted that she was aware of how much he loved the way that she said his name. Most people said it out of necessity or mild irritation – even she had, once – but there was something special in her voice. Not special enough, however, to dull the pain of handing his daughter over. It was a delicate manoeuvre, carefully choreographed around cannulas, tubes and wires. He tried not to focus on the way Hattie fussed, not ready to end this cuddle, as he made his way down to the ED to a shift that would surely be as far from the peace of the SCBU as it was possible to be.

* * *

From the moment her friend arrived, Zoe needed to ask neither where Dylan had been prior to standing at the back of the staffroom, nor whether he was okay. His attention was barely half-on what was happening around him: from her position at the edge of the room she observed his evident turmoil, trying to remain focused while his mind drifted, no doubt to the reason he had come from upstairs rather than entering the ED through the front doors like everyone else that morning.

As soon as the briefing was over, she made her way over to him and studied him carefully. He seemed mentally okay, just… distracted. Hopelessly distracted.

"Don't lecture me," he said shortly. "I can see you're dying to tell me that I need to concen –"

"I'm not." She cut him off firmly. "I just wanted to remind you that I'm here, if you need me today." She made eye contact with him, nodded encouragingly then left him to his thoughts. He was a little less okay than she had first estimated. Forcing him to talk though was a last-ditch measure not yet required. It was likely a fruitless endeavour, it felt important anyway to remind him that he was not alone.

Dylan could not give his job the focus it needed that morning, despite his assumption that Zoe was telling him off for exactly that. His mind kept going over and over Hattie's treatments so far, trying to predict the outcome of her CPAP review. He knew this was a pointless exercise really, but his clinically obsessive mind had latched onto this thought and would not let it go. Once again, it was a losing battle between rational and obsessive thoughts.

After three or four patients, and a stint in resus, he admitted defeat. The draw to take his break upstairs on the SCBU was strong, but he knew that he'd be hard-pressed to return to the ED afterwards. Instead, he took a cup of coffee outside. He turned his phone over and over in his free hand, locking and unlocking the screen repeatedly as he thought. Several times, he almost sent a message to Lily.

She would make sense of the chatter in his head. He trusted her to make an objective decision here and tell him where he should be. That was what he craved – to almost be treated like a child and have all the responsibility of choice taken away.

* * *

He had only been back inside the ED for a few seconds when Connie, looking harrassed, directed him to cubicle four.

A familiar, though long-absent, chill flooded under Dylan's skin on approaching that cubicle. He rolled his eyes, furious with his brain for choosing this fine time to revisit an old obsession. It was easy enough to shake it off though: a measured breath in, held, and out, followed by the solidly rational internal monologue that felt almost like lip service these days.

He nodded in acknowledgement of the young married couple in the cubicle. The patient, lying on the bed, was tall and lanky, well-dressed except for the tear in his suit trousers and deep gash in his thigh. There was a bruise blooming on the left of his forehead too – Dylan could predict the injury's cause before either the patient or his wife spoke. The woman standing beside the bed was very visibly pregnant, had thick auburn curls and barely took her eyes off her husband except to register Dylan's arrival. There was a minute flash of relief in her eyes.

In between pinballing thoughts on his patient, after his account of coming off his bicycle (helmetless, obviously) into his own front garden, Dylan was mildly distracted by thoughts of the quiet young woman beside him. It struck him that she was standing – there should have been a chair but it was conspicuously absent – and looked paler than even an auburn-haired person in January had any right to.

"I'm going to take a look at this wound, and then I'll need to ask you some standard questions about that head injury, alright?" Dylan's eyes flitted momentarily to the wife, whose own eyes were anxiously locked on the gory flesh wound her husband has sustained. He didn't like the colour of her at all; she looked like Sam had done in the early weeks of her pregnancy, before mercifully her morning sickness had abated. He wished that chair hadn't gone walkabouts.

"Nicky," the husband said, clearly thinking along similar lines, "It's going to take a while to clean this out, and there's nothing you can really do here. Why don't you go and find a seat out there, somewhere more comfortable?"

Nicky narrowed her eyes and squeezed her husband's hand. "I'm not sure," she said, her other hand delicately supporting the underside of her protruding stomach.

"Well I am," he assured her. "You need to go and sit down, anywhere that's not looking at this mess." He nodded in the direction of his leg. "I will be fine, I've got a doctor right here and it's only a glorified graze."

Dylan decided now was not the time to dispute the 'glorified graze' comment: it seemed to satisfy Nicky, in any case. "There would usually have been a chair in here," he said after Nicky had taken her leave. "I'm sorry, she wouldn't normally have to go."

"It's a relief, to tell you the truth. She's thirty three weeks, tomorrow, and hasn't stopped with the sickness yet. I don't think the blood was particularly helping."

"I see," Dylan replied. He went on quietly, dealing with the wound and the head injury interchangeably. Thirty three weeks in utero was more time than Harriet had got.

Everything with the patient was going fine until it came to cannulating him. "With the depth of this, I'm concerned about the risk of infection," he said after inspecting his stitches for the third time. "I'm going to take some bloods for testing and potentially start some antibiotics."

The patient agreed, and was externally calm – his nervous chatter gave him away though. It was all fine, and then, it wasn't.

"I just wish Nicky would have the baby already, I mean babies survive just fine at thirty three weeks now, and then she wouldn't feel so poorly all the time."

It was a throwaway comment, not thought through and not meant with any offence.

"Take it back."

Dylan's voice was soft, dangerous and barely steady under the weight of fury he suddenly carried.

"What?" The young man released a syllable of laughter, entirely unaware of his catastrophic misstep.

Dylan put the cannula down forcefully and stood up straight. He took a step back form the bed. "Take. It. Back." Each of the three words shook. "Don't you _dare, _you haven't the first idea… Don't dare wish away the time that is keeping your baby alive!" His voice rose and rose, pent-up panic and emotion pouring out.

David was walking through cubicles when he wished, for the first time, that he was hearing voices. He hoped with everything he had that the conversation (if it could even be called that) in cubicle four wasn't really happening. He stepped inside the boundary wall of the blue curtain and winced.

"My daughter is holding on by a thread in an incubator because I wished she would arrive sooner. Count yourself extremely lucky." Each word was a poison-dipped arrow and served its purpose perfectly.

"Dr Keogh," David said, unflinching. He seized Dylan by the upper arms and turned him around. "I will finish here," he said with his eyes locked on Dylan's, "while you take a breather. Go." Every bit of panic he hadn't wanted to see in the other man's eyes, was there.

* * *

Half of the department had overheard Dylan's explosion, so it was no surprise that Connie was the next to address him, intercepting his beeline for the staffroom.

"You're relieved from the shift," she said levelly. "And your next two."

Dylan blinked, finally returning to his own consciousness without the overrule of anger or impulsiveness. "I'm not – you're not – am I… suspended?"

Connie's shoulders dropped. "No," she replied gently. She reached out a hand and placed it on his upper arm in an urgent yet friendly hold. "You're lucky Hanssen wasn't down here to hear that or you might well have been looking at a disciplinary. It's compassionate leave, Dylan, not a suspension. You need to take some time; be with Sam, and be with your baby."

He nodded gratefully, speechless. Shame was gradually flooding him, combining with newly-increased worry over Hattie's CPAP review.

"We can look at things again closer to the time, but if you need anything, I will do my best to fix it," Connie said. She knew more than most that this precious time with a preemie couldn't be got back if it was missed.

For Dylan with his strong moral compass, this was exactly what he had needed. The decision had been taken out of his hands. He had felt irremovably compelled to both the SCBU and the ED, and couldn't extricate himself from either. Now, he didn't have to.

* * *

The staffroom door hadn't even swung shut behind him when hurried stiletto footsteps followed him in.

"I know, you told me so," he said frustratedly. His heartbeat was in his throat and could not be swallowed away. His hands were tingling unpleasantly.

Zoe sighed. She'd recognised his quick, bereft walk at once and known it was time to make good her earlier offer of a listening ear. "I think you've known me long enough to realise that I pick my moments for _I told you so. _This isn't one of them."

"I don't know how you have the self control." Dylan folded, dejected, into a seat at the back of the room. He steepled his fingers, resting his elbows on his knees and settling his chin on his thumbs. His nose touched the sides of his index fingers. "I never learn, do I?"

She sat beside him. "It's not that. The thing you're yet to master is that you're not entirely impervious to human emotion." A tiny snort of derisive laughter came, despite her friend's anxiety, before she pressed on. "What's happening with Hattie at the moment? You've been edgy about her for days, is something wrong?"

"It could be, I don't know." As his thoughts turned, uninterrupted, to his daughter, his heart rate picked up and his breaths became a little more uneven with the fresh wave of panic.

Zoe noticed this change at once: she heard his breaths and saw him stiffen beside her. "It's okay," she heard herself say automatically. "This is something that anyone would worry about – I promise you, this is not an overreaction. I can pretty much guarantee you that any parent in your position would feel the same. And most of them wouldn't have the return to work in the utter circus of an emergency department, either. You are doing well, Dylan," she reassured.

Though he felt uneasy, he nodded. It was good to hear that, even if it was often impossible to believe. He leaned slightly on Zoe, needing that physical reminder that he wasn't alone.

"Do you want to tell me about Hattie, then?"

* * *

Sam watched intently, hardly daring to breathe herself as the tiny mask was replaced by a tiny tube sitting under her daughter's nose. Her eyes focused precisely on Harriet's chest, wanting to be sure the rises and falls were not a fluke before she looked away. The rhythm of little breaths stayed even and true. Sam could barely contain her euphoria; she wasn't a crier before motherhood but there they were again, the reliable tears prompted by another enormous milestone in her premature baby's development.

"Man, I wish Dylan could have been here to see that," she remarked. She could still hardly tear her eyes from Hattie, but looked up when the consultant before her spoke.

"He's downstairs, isn't he?"

Sam nodded.

The consultant adjusted her glasses. "You could take this little one down to him, if you'd like."

Sam almost fell off her chair. Dumbstruck, she opened and closed her mouth a few times before managing to regain composure. "I think I'd like that very much."

* * *

"Whatever your OCD is trying to tell you, it doesn't matter one bit what you said or thought before Hattie was born. It's not your fault she's premature. _You didn't do this to her._" Zoe tried hard not to be frustrated with him; sometimes it was so difficult to gently reason with his obsessive thoughts. Underneath it all, he was still the holder of an extremely stubborn personality.

"I know," he said resignedly. "I know." He let out a long, slow breath and knotted his hands into a comforting wring.

Zoe pulled his hands apart. "Disfiguring your hands is not constructive here." She geared up to what needed to be said. He wouldn't like most of it, she imagined, but he needed to hear it. "When you and Sam came out to Michigan, do you remember the state I was in?"

He nodded gravely and looked at her thoughtfully.

His friend had been almost unrecognisable when they had flown out for Nick's funeral: she had spent the weeks since his death burying her grief and returning to work as if all was well. Work was something she had paused towards the end of Nick's battle with a brain tumour, in order to take care of him. She hadn't processed her feelings one bit, though the reappearance of Dylan and Sam in her life seemed to loosen the stopper (no doubt somewhat aided by their not being at each other's throats, too.) Dylan had never seen anyone so grief-stricken. Even he could see that it was doing her no good at all to stay in Michigan and be surrounded by the memory of him.

"You weren't you," he said quietly.

"No," Zoe agreed. "And this isn't you!"

Dylan was about to protest that _obviously _this wasn't him, of course he'd never been so unbelievably emotional before. But as he opened his mouth, she carried on.

"You are one of the most honest people I know. You never hold back the truth, but you're holding it back from yourself now, about how you're feeling and what you need to fix you."

He leaned forward and put his head in his hands. Ringing in his ears was a line from a long-ago CBT session. _Change the narrative. _Weaving messily in and out of that was his internal monologue, eternally critical, that needed to be quietened. Tears filled his eyes but did not fall. He shuddered when Zoe put a hand on his shoulder but didn't shake her off.

He didn't move when the door swung open.

Zoe turned sharply, ready to verbally attack whoever dared enter, but held back in the nick of time. She murmured to Dylan, "You know, there's someone else you need to be honest with," before standing up to take her leave.

On her way across the room, she couldn't help pausing to admire the beautiful, miniature baby in Sam's arms. She was so much smaller, outside her incubator, even wrapped up in clothes and blanket.

"Someone's graduated from CPAP, then?" she said warmly, drinking in the sight of this long-awaited baby, the product of a couple who had spent far too long stubbornly refusing to admit their feelings. Honesty in the feelings department wasn't a common theme of their relationship.

Sam nodded blissfully but cast a concerned eye to Dylan, who had at least perked up on hearing that Hattie was now CPAP-less. She looked to Zoe for help.

"Not OCD," the older woman whispered. "He's just been bottling up for too long, and he's not coping today."

"Thank you for being there for him."

"You know I'm always here, for either of you. That's not going to change." She squeezed Sam's shoulder, gazed down at the baby one last time, and left the room.

* * *

"I take it the review went well, then?" asked Dylan, side-stepping the elephant in the room as he looked down at Hattie and reached out a finger to stroke her cheek.

Sam nodded. They could perhaps afford to indulge their speciality of discussing something equally important but far less urgent. "It was a surprise that I could take her off the ward for a while."

"I must have missed something about her immunity, the when I looked over her bloods the other day," he said thoughtfully.

"No," she said softly. She couldn't dance around this anymore. "You don't have to always look over her bloods and fixate on her monitors. It's not helping you, and she doesn't need you to do it." She adjusted the baby in her arms, preparing to hand her over. "She has a whole team doing that, around the clock. I think… She just needs you to be her dad."

Dylan closed his eyes momentarily, searching for solace. "Let's go somewhere that I'm not constantly thinking we'll be walked in on." He'd never live it down, being overheard.

* * *

Sam kept hold of the baby, but Dylan took the oxygen container she had slung over one shoulder to come down to the ED. The minute cannula dribbling supplementary oxygen up Hattie's nose was a vast improvement on the CPAP that had seemed like it would last forever.

It was far too cold to take such a fragile baby outside, but watery sunlight poured down onto the Peace Garden. Sam and Dylan stopped in an airy corridor where the sun beamed through huge windows that overlooked the sparse January greenery. Dylan put the oxygen carrier on the floor and frowned through the glass.

"What's bothering you?" Sam asked, determined to get to the bottom of this.

He turned to look at her and his signature scowl morphed into sadness and confusion. He stepped forward, closing the gap between them, then slid one hand between Harriet's head and her cocoon of blankets. "I don't know what I'm doing," he said hoarsely. "I don't know how to be a dad, I don't have any decent source material on fatherhood to draw on _at all _from my own waste of space, and if my past is anything to go by then this little gem deserves so, so much better. She doesn't deserve a dad like me."

Sam let out a short, sad breath. "Please stop bottling all of that up, now wonder you're cracking under that pressure."

"I'm not cracking under pressure," he protested hotly. "I'm – you've already spoken to Connie, haven't you?"

She nodded. "Only enough to know she's putting you on compassionate leave the rest of this week, and she's of a mind to sign you off next week too."

"I didn't know about next week. Why?"

"Because she's concerned about you!"

Dylan swallowed. He kept his hand on his daughter but looked out of the window again. There was a single cloud of a cold blue sky. He felt like that cloud.

"She means well, Dylan. She thought you needed some time to come to terms with what's going on, and I – I agree with her," Sam said hesitantly. "Snapping at patients isn't you, these days."

He hung his head.

"You're allowed to find all of this overwhelming, you know? How many times have I failed to hold it together now? Take her from me a moment." She passed Hattie over, a far easier task when she was temporarily unplugged. "You are doing a good job. You don't have to know everything – the fact you're even thinking about that, proves how much you care and that's what counts. It's what matters to me and it's what will matter to her, one day. Don't give your own dad another thought. You're forging your own path here. Do you really think I want to turn out like _my _mother?"

Dylan looked from Hattie's face to Sam's. "I've never even met the woman."

"Precisely. There's a good reason for that. Both of us are new to this and starting from ground zero. And that is okay. Just please, please, talk to me, or Zoe, or even call Lily next time it starts stacking up. I don't think Connie will be able to call it compassionate leave if you remove a patient's head from their shoulders."

Relaxing minutely for the first time in what felt like days, Dylan let out a breath of laughter. The movement was enough to unsettle Hattie, who wriggled and squeaked, opening her eyes and fashioning something of a facial expression she could only have inherited from paternal genetics. Dylan smiled down at her, then inspected the patches of sunlight snaking through tree branches and window frames. He stepped backwards and turned a little. "It might only be through a window, in a hospital corridor at that," he said, "but she's never had the sun on her face before."

How he thought he would be a substandard father, was beyond Sam. She stepped briefly into their patch of sunlight and kissed Dylan's cheek.


	9. What if this is all you ever get?

**A jump back in the timeline for this instalment, to an emotional but important point in Sam's pregnancy. Sort of a follow-up to _Quiet and Asleep _(chapter 4)**

_What if this is all the love you ever get? _by Snow Patrol  
18 weeks pregnant

"_Dylan, it's me, will you call me when you get this? I just want to know you're okay."_

"_Answer the phone, please! I can't do another night lying awake worrying that you're not sleeping either. I need to hear you."_

"_Dylan? Please, please call me. I've had a rubbish day and everything hurts – I know you can't do anything from where you are, but I miss you."_

"_I tried calling the clinic this morning. They told me they wouldn't force you to talk to me if you weren't answering my calls. But it's been nearly a week; I know this is hard for you – I don't want you to think I'm nagging you to call, I just need to know how you are. The woman I spoke to was less than helpful, so I'm trying you again. Again."_

"_Grumpy, please. It's awful without you here and I can't stand all this not knowing. I know you'll do all this on your own terms, when you're ready… Juts know that I love you, and I will drop everything for you, the minute you call."_

* * *

Sam was nursing a mug of hot chocolate at the ambulance station when Iain walked in. She eyed him carefully from her seat at the breakfast bar as he took next week's rota and pinned it to the notice board, before abandoning her mug entirely to inspect the colour-coded paper.

"You've grown," he remarked, raising his eyebrows as he looked her up and down.

She ran her finger along the line of her shifts, frowned, then turned to face him. Mildly embarrassed, she glanced down at her distended stomach. It was true: the bump has gone from barely there to _definitely there _in what seemed like no time at all. It was taking some getting used to. She wasn't quite used to waking up and seeing this body in the mirror, though she couldn't conceal her joy in the rare moments she allowed herself to marvel at the fact she was managing to grow a life inside her. Still, having other people comment was definitely not something she had come to terms with. "You wouldn't find it so funny if it was your body that didn't feel like your own anymore!" she said, hands on her hips. She was unaware of mimicking Dylan's preferred power-pose.

She spoke with annoyance, though her fingertips were ever so gentle on the sides of her stomach. It wasn't just the internal presence of a baby that made her feel as though her body wasn't hers: since she'd become visibly pregnant, she had unwillingly relinquished ownership of her body. Eyes rested on her stomach before her face and it seemed that the world and his dog now had the right to pass comment. She wouldn't usually snap at Iain, even for this, but she was tired and wasn't sure if her nemesis morning sickness might have been attempting a resurgence.

Iain put up his hands in surrender. "All right, all right, message received! What's got your back up, so early in the shift?"

"Sorry, Iain, misplaced anger. I didn't mean to go off at you. I'm in need of a strong coffee, which I can't have, I'm feeling rotten, and I'd specifically asked for nights, next week, but looks like I can't have those either."

Jan strode into the room just then, catching the tail end of Sam's grievances.

Iain picked up Sam's mug and passed it to her. "Guess I caught you at the wrong time, then," he said gently.

"Mm," Sam agreed. "Am I allowed to pull the hormone card?"

Iain scoffed. "With me? Not a chance, mate." He smiled an easy smile. She always pushed her luck.

"Have you heard from Dylan?" Jan asked. She knew Sam was often reluctant to talk about him, outside the safety of these walls.

At the mention of his name, Sam's worry for him came to a violent head and she felt bile rising in her throat. She didn't like to imagine the colour she had turned. Thrusting her mug in Iain's direction, she hurriedly disappeared in the direction of the toilets.

* * *

The ladies' in the ambulance station was poky and cramped, though its saving grace was the large frosted window that made up most of one wall: at least the room was well-lit. When she was finished losing both the contents of her stomach and her dignity, Sam sat against the tall pane of glass with her knees half-drawn up. Her bump was safely encased, she had stopped short of pulling her knees up to her chest when her thighs made contact with her stomach, and folded her arms in the space between. She closed her eyes for a moment, glad of the temporary relief.

There was a light tap at the door and a moment later, Sam heard a lyrical Welsh accent. She ducked her head meekly and averted her eyes when Jan came in.

"I thought we were finished with all of this?" she said in careful jest.

Sam laughed hollowly. "So did I." She shrugged, not eager to divulge that it wasn't the burgeoning life inside her that was the cause of this bilious attack.

Jan held out a hand to help her colleague up from the floor. "Much as I would love to leave you down there for a bit longer, I can't be having you here if you're not well."

"I'll be fine. One-time blip. I'm fine," Sam assured her.

"I know," the older woman agreed. She paused. "_This _is why I didn't put you on nights like you asked. You need all the rest you can get."

Sam's shoulders dropped almost imperceptibly. She returned herself to full-heighted stance, nearly army-style, at once. "Nights are easier here though, because they mean I'm not thinking," she said, hoping Jan would catch her drift.

She did, of course, and narrowed her eyes for a moment. "You _have _heard from him, haven't you?" Jan wondered for a moment if this was simple morning sickness or something else entirely. The atmosphere shifted as soon as talk of Dylan entered any conversation.

"Of course I have," Sam replied, surprising herself with how easily the lie came to her lips. "He's doing… okay, all things considered."

Jan nodded, relieved. "That's all you can hope for, isn't it?"

Their radios crackled into life.

* * *

Between calls, later that day, Iain stopped the ambulance at a petrol station. "Pitstop for snacks," he said simply. "Do you want anything?"

Sam just shook her head. A sigh escaped without permission – she looked over at Iain and raised her hand to halt what she knew was coming. "Go and get your snacks before we get another shout. I'm _fine_."

With Iain gone, it was easier to check her phone and harder to hide her disappointment when there were still no messages or calls, not even from the landline number of the clinic. She closed her eyes and rested her head on the window.

The driver's side door opened and Iain got back into the ambulance with a carrier bag. He pulled a Mars bar from it before dropping the bag on Sam's lap.

"I told you, I'm not –" She stopped, looking into the bag and feeling touched. A small smile crossed her lips. He'd put some thought into this lot, in the short time he'd had. Still and sparkling water, fresh apple juice, chocolate digestives, a gingerbread man and a bar of Cadbury's fruit and nut. "How many do you think I'm eating for?" she asked, teasing him.

"Shut up," Iain replied bashfully. "You need to eat _something_, and I thought you'd appreciate the choice."

She picked out the gingerbread man without another word, the corners of her lips twitching upwards.

* * *

They both rolled their eyes when the next call came – they knew at once, recognising the details of their 'frequent flier', that their presence would be barely tolerated by the inebriated homeless man in the park. A concerned passer-by would have spotted him and called it in. And they couldn't be blamed for feeling sympathy towards him: when he wasn't hurling insults, Sam and Iain also had a soft spot for him.

"I'll go first, you grab the bag," Sam said as they pulled up about fifty yards from the man, slumped on a bench with a puddle of vomit beside him. _Nice,_ she thought, glad her earlier nausea had subsided.

"You sure?" Iain checked.

She tossed her ponytail back over her shoulder. "Oh please, I'm pregnant, you can't expect me to carry that _big, heavy bag_!" she joked, skirting over what Iain had actually meant. He knew better than to assume she was vulnerable!

She hadn't even been still for that long, but she was already becoming stiff and sore. Lack of proper sleep was killing her slowly. Her lower back ached, though she was almost accustomed to that now.

"Rise and shine, Johnny," she said brightly as she got closer to him. The smell of beer poured off him and for a moment Sam had to hold back, appalled by the scent. It had to be true then, sensitivity really did increase with pregnancy: she'd never been so bothered before. She laid a hand on Johnny's shoulder. "Let's get a look at you –"

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" he slurred, shrugging her off. He spotted her stomach and sneered. Nice for some to have a life worth living. "Get your hands off me!" He landed a punch on her cheek with a force that threw her off her feet.

Sam tumbled backwards and collided awkwardly with a bin, her back taking all of the impact.

"HEY!" Iain roared, his boots pounding down the path. "She tried to help you, like always, what's your problem pal?" Iain frowned, scrutinising Johnny's every movement. Then, resisting the urge to return the favour and punch the man himself, Iain turned to Sam. He was worried: she hadn't yet moved from the spot where she'd landed.

Her face was creased in pain around the red mark that threatened to evolve into a bruise with the full spectrum of colours.

"Sam?"

Her eyebrows furrowed and for a moment, she squeezed her eyes shut. "Don't ask me if I'm okay," she said through gritted teeth. "Because I don't know." The workable soreness in her back was no more: staying in her awkward landing position probable wasn't helping, but the impact with the bin had set her back on fire. The Sam Nicholls of old would already have been up and running – though in this case, speed would be unnecessary to catch her assailant who had seized the opportunity to slope away. But the Sam on the damp ground of the park was frightened to say the least. She'd miscarried once before and was terrified of repeating that experience.

* * *

All she could think of, heading back to the ED, was that Dylan wasn't here and he had made himself effectively unreachable. She stared out of the window with her jaw set stoically, preferring the pain he caused to the throb in her cheek and the flames licking up and down from her hips to the middle of her ribcage.

* * *

Sam was quiet in cubicles, wrapped up in her thoughts and the pain enveloping her face and back. She shuddered, though it wasn't cold, her teeth chattering as an audible and visible reminder that all was not well.

Iain's walkie-talkie released a stream of words unintelligible to the untrained ear but clear enough for him and for Sam. They both frowned as stiletto heel clicks approached the cubicle, and reluctantly Iain got up. "I have to go," he said, looking from Sam to Zoe apologetically. "Jan will want a statement, and to know how you're doing." He turned to Sam, and pulled her fleece back up onto her shoulders where it had slipped down. "You'll be alright," he murmured, dropping a kiss onto the top of her head.

Though she'd be the last to admit it, Zoe was glad of the chance to look after Sam. She'd been quiet for a few days, no doubt still reeling from the shock of Dylan having to be admitted to inpatient treatment. Quite deliberately, she'd followed a predictable pattern of behaviour and thrown herself headlong into work as a coping mechanism, forgetting that it wasn't just herself in the firing line these days.

"Ice," Zoe said, pressing a cool pack into Sam's hands in place of offering any emotional support – not because she didn't want to, but because neither she nor Sam was skilled enough in that area to know where to start. "Get that on your cheek, and you might look a little less like you've gone ten rounds in the ring. Did the punch split your lip, on the inside?"

Sam ran her tongue gingerly around the inside of her mouth. It hurt, but she couldn't taste blood. "No," she replied quietly.

Zoe readied herself for her next question. Sam's eyes were rimmed with red and her monosyllabic answer had revealed as much as her tense, close body language. "Sam," she began carefully, "A few months ago, Dylan told me what happened to your shoulder." She paused at this sank in and tried to ignore the wounded expression in Sam's wide eyes. "He only told me, no-one else – he knew you didn't want it to be common knowledge. It was in case… In case anything ever happened and he wasn't here."

The younger woman's stubbornly blank expression relented at last, and her lower lip trembled. "He – he told you that?" she stammered, the words sticking in her throat. That was the Dylan she missed the most: plain-speaking and endlessly practical but still managing to put her first, above all else. Despite knowing she was protected by Zoe, she felt very alone without him here. How would she get news to him? _Should _she get news to him, when he might still be in such a distressed state?

She mentally shook herself. It wasn't the time for those circular debates. "It's not my shoulder," she said. "That's fine, I'm sure. No, I –" She tried to sit up a little more and regretted it at once. Her face screwed up in pain. "I've been having a lot of discomfort in my back anyway, over the last few weeks. I fell awkwardly onto it, against a bin, so it's about ten times worse now."

"I guess Iain already checked you over in situ?"

Sam nodded, embarrassed. "As far as I would let him, yes. Soft tissue damage, he reckoned, though I imagine you'll want your own look?"

"Too right," Zoe replied. "I'm not putting you anywhere near a scanner if I don't have to, given the circumstances." Her eyes drifted down to Sam's stomach.

Sam put a hand over the barely-there bump worriedly. Dylan might have told Zoe about the shooting, but did she know about the miscarriage too? It was secret even more closely guarded, and she would prefer it to stay that way. "Zoe? You don't think… A fall like this couldn't… It wouldn't harm my baby, would it?" All of her own extended medical knowledge was moot now. She wanted to hear it from someone else, someone she trusted.

Zoe's shoulders dropped. Once again in a time of stress, Sam's age and experience had been stripped away, leaving her innocent and unsure. She reached out and squeezed the hand that wasn't cradling the cold gel pack. "I've seen mums walk away from far worse than drunken punches, with no ill-effects whatsoever. But you know I can't make any promises."

A tiny smile emerged on Sam's bruised face. "No-one's called me a mum before," she said, somewhat proud despite how much her heart ached.

"You'll have to get used to that one, then," Zoe replied warmly.

"Will you – can you be the one to check?"

Zoe's heart leapt with the responsibility, though she maintained an expertly cool facade. "If that's what you want, then yes."

* * *

It _was _just bruising, luckily, and eventually Sam could be persuaded to accept her recommended prescription of painkillers.

She waited for the sound with bated breath. Unbeknownst to her, Zoe's breath was also held, and then released along with the sound of a tiny, relentlessly heartbeat.

Sam closed her eyes and finally relaxed, her thoughts for a moment steeped in the sound that was evidence of an inextinguishable life.

"It's a powerful sound, isn't it?" Zoe remarked. "You look like a different person to the one I saw when I walked in here."

Sam nodded, sitting up and accepting the paper towel offered to her, to wipe off the jelly from the ultrasound. It was a powerful sound alright, just one that should have had another pair of ears present to hear it.

As Zoe tidied things away, Sam felt a strange flutter in her abdomen. She frowned in confusion, but when the fluttering came again a few moments later, it was unmistakable. She gasped, then burst into tears.

"Hey, what's the matter?" Zoe asked quickly, dropping everything to be there for Sam in her moment of acute need. That elephant in the room was making itself known, rocking every inch of Sam with vicious sobs that were surely wreaking havoc with her bruises. She could barely draw breath, much less produce words, which had Zoe worried. Had she missed something? "Sam, what hurts?"

Sam shook her head: her pain was not something Zoe could take away. This was _Zoe_, it should have been easy to tell her. But she had never been good at having girlfriends and female confidantes. She wasn't sure she could even put it into words, this unfathomably deep ache that couldn't be resolved until Dylan's inpatient stay was over.

"I can't do this," she said between wobbly breaths.

Zoe, who had put her arms around Sam once it had been confirmed she was medically fine, rubbed her back before leaning out of the hug. "Can't do what, sweetheart?" she asked. Sam's distraught face pulled her heartstrings: tears poured down her pink cheeks, sparkling on the blooming bruise that had stubbornly refused to be quietened by ice.

"I – I just felt – my baby – moving," she stammered, before taking a few breaths to soothe herself. "It was – the first time, and – Dylan's not here." She was punctuated by little hiccups, but her point got across.

"Oh Sam, I'm sorry." She was at a loss. What was there to say?

Sam wiped her eyes clumsily with her sleeves, and swore under her breath as doing so brushed her sore cheek. "I just want him to be here," she said simply. "I was him to know how much today scared me. I want to go home and find him there, ready to hug it away."

It was a shock to hear Sam speak so emotionally. Verbally at least, she was always a closed book, often a closed book in a locked box surrounded by electrified barbed wire. Zoe raised her eyebrows and took Sam's two hands in her own.

Something hadn't added up since she'd taken Dylan to London. She'd been asked for updates, casually by acquaintances and in all seriousness by herself and Connie. And while it hadn't been a surprise that her responses had been guarded, the lack of real detail had been unusual. She'd repeated herself a few times, which wasn't like her at all.

"You have heard from him, haven't you, while he's been in London? Like, actually spoken to him?" Zoe dreaded the answer – she thought she knew already.

Sam looked down mournfully. She opened her mouth, but found no words so was forced to close it again. She closed her eyes, willing no more tears to fall.

With her worst fear confirmed, Zoe held Sam's hands tighter.

"I've tried to call every day," whispered Sam. "Twice, on some days, but he won't answer the phone." She pressed her lips firmly together for a moment. "When I called the clinic directly, they –" Her voice cracked and her red eyes leaked fresh tears. "They said they wouldn't make him speak to me if he was choosing not to."

Zoe hugged her again, aghast that she'd kept this to herself. "Sweetheart," she breathed. It was a worrying time, no doubt about it, but it was amplified ten-fold for Sam, having heard nothing of how Dylan was coping now. A lot could change in a week, as both women knew well.

Even recounting that conversation with the admin assistant at the clinic was a painful experience. It had taken the wind out of her sails, what little remained, to hear someone tell her that Dylan was actively electing not to speak to her. Couldn't that woman understand? It wasn't like that, _Dylan _wasn't making that decision. He was ruled by his intrusive thoughts, _they _were the ones choosing. She loved him – no-one else would have a chance of being the cause of quite so many tears – but the guidelines, stupid endless rules, were getting in the way.

"Here's what you're going to do, okay?" Zoe said, pushing her own concerns aside and sensing Sam's need for someone else to try and fix it all. "You try one more time. I know it's going to be hard, and I will stay with you when you call, if that's what you want. But you throw everything you've got at whoever picks up the phone. Make them want to sidestep the red tape… And if that still doesn't work, we will ask Connie to pull strings again, go straight to the top. You will hear from him one way or another, okay?"

* * *

It was an outlandish plan, one so outrageous that it might just work. Armed with her prescription and two cold packs to prevent her having to sacrifice any bags of frozen veg at home, Sam prepared herself to go home.

"Zoe?" she said, stopping her friend briefly before she left the cubicle and disappeared into the mêlée of the ED. "I – I have a scan next week. They'll tell me the gender, if I want to know."

"_Do _you want to know?"

Sam paused, an agonised look in her eye. "Not if I'm going to be alone. I want to know, and I know Dylan would, if he was here… Will you come? Please?"

Zoe smiled. "Even if I have to move mountains."

* * *

Empowered by the fleeting motion of her baby and not content to spend another night feeling so terribly alone, Sam exploded down the phone. "… No! I am eighteen weeks pregnant and had an awful scare at work today that could have ended it all. I don't care what your procedures and regulations say, I don't care if you have to force the phone into his hands, but I _need _to speak to Dylan Keogh, _tonight_."

Silence. Sam closed her eyes, not daring to hope that this might have had the effect that Zoe said it might. But then –

"Hold the line, please."

She rested her head against the back of the sofa triumphantly for a few seconds before her nerves kicked in. There were still no guarantees – could it still be impossible to speak to him, even when the call was passed straight into his hands? It wasn't easy to remind herself that he was still unwell.

The line crackled, then returned to life. "Sam?" he said uncertainly.

Sam let out a relieved sigh. "It's me, Grumpy, don't worry. I've never been so pleased to hear your voice..."


End file.
